The state has a golden opportunity to get out from under a federal court decree that has been hanging over Connecticut for more than 25 years — a national record that will probably never be beaten.

“Juan F.,” as the decree is known, created a set of performance goals for the state’s children and family services system that, until Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appointed Joette Katz as commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, the state didn’t seem to take very seriously.

Under Katz, the state has made amazing progress in improving the health and well-being of Connecticut children and families to the point where the plaintiffs have agreed to take 16 of the 22 performance goals off the table in return for a promise to fund DCF at $800 million a year, which is about what the state has been spending for the last several budget cycles.

The agreement will allow the state to focus on a small handful of performance goals that pave the way to freedom from federal oversight, at which time the mandatory spending requirement also goes away.

But rather than embracing the deal as a major step toward regaining full control over its own system — and, not incidentally, the $1.5 million the state spends on the federal court monitor every year — the legislature appears poised not just to kibosh the deal, but to kill it overwhelmingly. This is startling.

The testimony against the agreement ranges from amusing to disturbing. Some legislators argue that locked-in funding will breed DCF complacency, as if competition for funding among various Connecticut agencies spurs high performance. (Just ask anyone who has spent time at a DMV office lately how that’s working out.) Some argue that a loss of federal oversight will lead to more child fatalities, which begs the question of why, out of the top five performing states in the Annie E. Casey Kids Count child and family health and well-being rankings, the top four are unencumbered by federal oversight — the fifth being Connecticut!

Still others contend that if the deal goes through, advocates in other policy areas (e.g., health and mental health) will be inspired to sue the state so other Connecticut state agencies will have budgets locked in as part of negotiated settlements. This ignores the fact that federal receivership typically leads to increased funding for the target agency, not a fixed amount.

More worrisome, some suspect that key leaders in the legislature actually don’t want to get out from under Juan F. because in their view, continued federal oversight guarantees employment for key constituencies.

But the really alarming dynamic here is that you have members of a state legislature who have been duly elected by their constituents to carry out the state’s official business, and those legislators would rather the federal government be in charge when it comes to protecting the health and well-being of Connecticut’s kids and families?

That the Connecticut General Assembly would continue to leave that solemn duty and responsibility to the feds is unsettling. Still, it will probably come as a shock to some in the legislature when the Juan F. agreement goes down to defeat and the state of Connecticut is dragged back into federal court by plaintiffs. That’s going to be an expensive lesson in failure, one that will cost Connecticut taxpayers a lot more than the $800 million currently on the table.

State Rep. Diana S. Urban, D-North Stonington, chairs the Connecticut Committee on Children. Jonathan Walters is formerly executive editor of Governing Magazine and specialized in covering children and families. They were married in October 2016.