Let's be honest, you can't swing a cat in Hartford without hitting a former state lawmaker now working, and earning a substantial salary, as a state commissioner, fresh from Gov. Dannel Malloy's political payback revolving door.

It works pretty simply.   

The legislators toil away for countless sessions of the General Assembly, making the part-time wages that everyone seems to think qualifies them to be "citizen legislators."

This is supposed to harken back to olde days in Connecticut, when famers and blacksmiths went up to Hartford a few times a year to vote on weighty matters, then went back to their day jobs.

Now, for the lucky ones, who vote their cards right, they can finish their political service, for which they are poorly compensated, then stride into the Malloy revolving door and come out the other side with a lifetime of turbocharged pension and benefits.

The current Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner presiding over the agency's meltdown — Wait: It's true no one has actually died in the daylong DMV lines yet — is a former state senator from Bridgeport and a veteran of the Malloy revolving door.

One of the most recent through the door was former state Rep. Betsy Ritter of Waterford, who got a pension-stretching commissionership from Malloy, even though she lost her race for state Senate. But she tried, ran and lost for the team. Bingo: a salary and pension credits on steroids.

I raise this issue of this sorry practice not with any hope that it will ever end. Indeed, Malloy is good at it, but he didn't by any means invent it.

No, I raise it because it seems like a solution to the Sen. Andrew Maynard problem.

I'd like to think that the good senator from Stonington will recuperate enough from his brain injury to competently represent the voters in his Senate district in the next session of the General Assembly. But I worry that he won't.

Certainly it would be a shame if he returns for another session like the last one, in which he attended Senate sessions and voted but won't respond to calls from constituents and won't be interviewed by the media, any media.

This is a mockery of democracy, a legislator voting but not talking or explaining his votes. His Senate office did not release one news release quoting him last session. I couldn't even acquire a tally of his votes, despite several requests.

He sided with the governor in the close vote on the budget. A vote we would not have expected from the earlier, explaining Sen. Maynard, who often butted budget heads with the governor.

The Democratic leadership, from the governor on down, is responsible for this strange form of representation without explanation.

I think voters gave the well-liked senator the benefit of the doubt that he could recover enough from his injuries to return to the Senate. I don't think anyone envisioned he would return to vote but not to respond to voters.

The senator no doubt wants to return to a normal political routine. And he is unlikely to retire, since his service for one more session would enable him to collect a modest state retirement pension and medical benefits.

I don't expect the governor to bestow on Maynard one of the valuable commissionerships, the kind that go to team players who lose their bid for a state Senate seat.

But can't Gov. Malloy find an appropriate place for Sen. Maynard somewhere on the vast state payroll, a less prominent place where he can recuperate and earn the last leg of the slog toward a pension?

Then he could resign from the Senate and let voters have a representative who is willing and able to not only vote but to talk about it, too.

With a successful recovery over, he also could run again for his Senate seat. In that event, I expect he would do very well indeed.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct