I am electing to pay special attention to two eastern Connecticut senators this legislative session, in part because, as Senate co-chairs of the powerful Appropriations Committee, they will play an outsized role in addressing the state's fiscal crisis.

I think, too, that together, Democrat Sen. Cathy Osten of Sprague and Republican Sen. Paul Formica of East Lyme, owing to their unusual co-chairmanship of appropriations, a result of the tie in the number of senators, will provide an interesting yin and yang of Connecticut state government.

Already, they are on diverging courses for the session, based on some of the bills they have introduced or co-sponsored.

I caught up with Osten because I was curious about a bill she introduced proposing March 29 as Bob Hope Day.

She scoffed when I asked if she had been a fan, suggesting I was implying she is older than she is.

No, she explained, An Act Designating Bob Hope Day was a request from a veteran. I have to say she gets high marks there for constituent service, indulging the whim of an aging veteran who liked the late comedian's overseas morale-building shows.

Bob Hope Day turned out to be a good segue to a conversation about Osten's expectations for the next session and working with her Senate co-chair.

She and Formica have an excellent working relationship and she is looking forward to steering the budget committee with him, she said.

That could bode well for eastern Connecticut.

One of the more interesting bills that Osten has put her name on would give municipalities the ability to levy a local sales tax of 0.5 percent.

She didn't seem especially eager to discuss it, though, saying it is not a significant change in the way the state taxes and that it has been discussed before.

"The municipalities asked for it," she said. "They would like another funding source."

Another of Osten's proposals, to allow small towns to do away with school superintendents, is a potential municipal money saver.

Other bills she has sponsored are hardly revenue neutral, like plans to allow employees, upon death, to pass their pensions to a "significant other," as well as measures to exempt some federal pensions and Social Security payments from the income tax as well as raising the threshold at which the state taxes estates.

The estate tax change and exemption for Social Security are appealing to many Republicans.

But some of the legislation Sen. Formica has sponsored is definitely not appealing to his co-chair on appropriations, like eliminating pensions from the scope of collective bargaining agreements, making new state workers participate in contribution benefits plans or ending the use of overtime pay in calculating pensions.

I especially like one of the bills co-sponsored by Formica, an act requiring any municipality impacted by a change in state commuter rail services hold a referendum to approve the change.

I was reminded, the last time I wrote about our new appropriations chairs, that the region had a Republican Senate chairman of appropriations back in the Reagan era.

Pierce Connair of East Lyme wrote to tell me how he was appointed, as a young Republican senator, when the Senate and House were both controlled by Republicans.

"I was still trying to find the men's room when I was named Senate Chair of Appropriations," he wrote in an email. "We enacted a long list of good legislation ... Democrats and Republicans actually worked together in those days."

In the next election, though, Sen. Chris Dodd topped the ticket and "wiped out our Republican Camelot," Connair wrote.

That Republican Camelot is now only a twinkle in the eye of another Republican chair of appropriations from East Lyme.

And Formica already knows where to find the men's room.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com