The Maynard charade continues
I found the conversation I had with Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney Wednesday, about Sen. Andrew Maynard’s return to the legislature after his most recent accident, to be troubling in several ways.
First, I thought it odd that Looney, when I asked why Maynard attended the ceremonial Senate session in the morning but skipped the main event of the day, the governor’s address to a joint session of the House and Senate, suggested maybe there was no compelling reason to stay.
“Some of them don’t,” he said, as if the senators who work with him are like wayward ducks, wandering off and skipping the governor’s budget address.
When I asked what senator other than Maynard skipped the main event of Wednesday’s opening of the session, he couldn’t name one.
Is it possible someone decided that Sen. Maynard, who was escorted in and out of the Senate chamber from an adjacent private caucus room, should not be seated in the more raucous House chamber, entering and leaving through public hallways?
The senator has not agreed to any media interviews since a fall at home in 2014 in which he suffered a brain injury. There has also been no official public reporting, from medical records or his doctors, on his condition or ability to serve.
Why in the world would a senator attend the brief and informal Senate session Wednesday morning, in which no legislative business is conducted and legislators introduce their family members, and skip the governor’s outline of his plans for the upcoming legislative session?
Sen. Looney, who told me he had a brief conversation with Sen. Maynard Wednesday, said he is recovering well from his most recent accident — a car crash on Route 32 that totaled his car and hospitalized him — and will be attending the next session of the General Assembly.
“We’re happy to have him back,” Looney said.
The accident, which remains under investigation, involved another car. The driver of that car, complaining of pain, sought medical treatment the next day.
When I asked the Senate president pro tem Wednesday whether Sen. Maynard is driving again, he looked at me like it was the strangest question I could have asked. He said he doesn’t know.
Really?
One of the senators in your Democratic majority, whom you may count on for crucial votes in the upcoming session, like last year’s razor-thin vote on the budget, has been recovering from a serious car accident and you haven’t asked whether he can drive again?
This is, after all, the same senator whose brain injury could have been related to the car accident in which he struck another car on the wrong side of a divided highway.
A spokesman for Maynard also said he doesn’t know whether the senator is driving again, but he said he thought he came to Hartford Wednesday with family.
Most people would have frank conversations with their employers if a car accident had left them without a driver’s license, but I guess it doesn’t work that way for senators.
Later in the day, I spoke with lawyers for the firm representing Sen. Maynard, and they told me he had surrendered his license in the hospital when the police asked for it.
The lawyers also said they expect the police report to conclude the senator had a seizure prior to the car accident.
Someone should tell the Senate president pro tem that he may need to send a car this session, if he is counting on votes from the senator from Stonington, the senator who isn’t talking to the media or his constituents.
This is the opinion of David Collins.
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: @DavidCollinsct
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