With the legislative session beginning Wednesday, legislators are well into the process of staking out their primary issues.

Taxes, mental health, crime, energy, COVID-19 recovery and government accountability are some of the issues eastern Connecticut's legislators, as well as the state Republican and Democratic party leaders and Gov. Ned Lamont, will be focused on this session.

The so-called short session focuses primarily on adjustments to the biennial budget, but other bills can be introduced through committees.

State Rep. Christine Conley, D-Groton, said her focus is on the budget and "any local projects towns are looking to finance."

"The delegation met with Groton; I've heard from New London as to their projects. And I have started meetings on things short term and long term on the horizon so we can get projects moving," Conley said.

Health issues

Conley sits on the legislature's judiciary, transportation and planning and development committees. She's working on several bills, whether assigned by her committees or what she's personally interested in, on expanding health care access and other issues.

"Cost is important. There's cost and then there's accessibility," she said about health care. "If we make it cheaper and providers are located in the big cities, that doesn't help residents of eastern Connecticut. How can we get people access to health care providers, mental health care providers, that's both cost efficient and better care?"

Conley said what multiple Democrats and Republicans agreed on: "COVID has increased the need for mental health for adults and children."

State Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, echoed Conley. "My colleagues are incredibly focused on mental health issues because we're seeing an unbelievable impact on people's mental well-being," he said. "Some of the impacts are less tangible in an overt way until it's too late — drug addiction, suicide rates, are a problem. I think money invested there is well spent."

State Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, has helped engineer a Republican proposal with a series of policies geared toward greater access to mental health for children and, in general, maternal and workforce mental health, among other issues.

State Rep. Anthony Nolan, D-New London, said improving mental health care for children is his top priority. "I have a hard time with the latest reports especially from our child advocate that shows that our children in the system are not getting proper mental health assistance," he said. "I plan on making it very evident and trying to go through the right channels to make sure that funding is shifted either to make sure we hire the appropriate personnel and/or make sure that our children are able to get the care they need."

COVID recovery and children's mental health are also among the top issues for state Rep. Holly Cheeseman, R-East Lyme. But she has made her distaste for the governor's repeated extension of his health crisis executive powers known, and she will not be supporting the move this time around, either.

"This is my sixth year, I've never had so many emails — and these are not boilerplate emails ... These are individually written pleas from the heart from parents but also from other citizens saying it's time to stop, you as the legislature have to step forward," Cheeseman said. "We are not in the same place. We have to go back to the regular way we run the state."

Energy and fishing industries

Somers spoke of other bills she's working on, including "bills to deal with our fishermen." She brought up how offshore wind has affected fishermen in the area, who have said their concerns are being ignored by federal officials working to lease massive tracts of ocean bottom off the Northeast coast to wind power companies. Some of those tracts of bottom also happen to be in areas where fishing boats land their catches and transit.

"If they can't fish anymore in the areas these wind farms are going, there needs to be some sort of compensation for them," Somers said. "We are putting them out of business, and they have spent a lot of money on these ships."

She also mentioned working on legislation that would be "an overhaul of the judicial process itself" and "help to bring cases to prosecution more easily."

As Energy and Technology Committee chair, Needleman will be keyed in on energy issues and specifically keeping ratepayer costs down. State Sen. Paul Formica, R-East Lyme, a ranking member on the committee, also said that is a top concern, along with preventing rolling blackouts.

Tax relief, the economy

One of Needleman's main focuses is on the economy. He referenced the estimated $336 million in tax cuts that Gov. Ned Lamont proposed Wednesday, which come in the form of a property tax credit, a student loan tax credit, pensions and annuities and lowering the tax-rate cap.

Needleman said he would like to see the legislature do something with tax relief. "On the other hand, I'm in the place of — use surpluses to pay down debt except for maybe spending that money on one-time capital nonrecurring things," he said. "I don't believe short-term or one-time money for cutting taxes is helpful ... if that extra tax revenue goes away."

Long-term, Needleman worries Connecticut is too reliant on people who work on Wall Street in hedge funds or private equity for its tax revenue. "I'm happy not to raise taxes on them just so we don't have them leave," he said.

Senate Republican Leader Kevin Kelly also responded to the governor's proposals in a statement released from his office: "It must be an election year since Democrats are talking about tax cuts. Unfortunately, there is no actual relief here until next year. Republicans have long called for relief when it comes to property taxes and taxes on pension in particular. But we also need immediate relief."

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, chair of the appropriations committee, has been laying out her agenda publicly in the past couple of weeks, which includes how the state should handle its relatively newfound solid economic standing. She said that while funding programs is important and lowering taxes is possible, paying down unfunded obligations is "the biggest thing of all."

"Our problem continues to be that debt we achieved before 1986, which has continued to hang around our shoulders and not allowed us the resources to deal with big issues, like the recession, in the past," she said. "In 2008, we were dead in the water, and now, in the pandemic, based on the federal dollars but also based on the fact we're starting to pay this pension debt down, we have options."

Osten said she will be prioritizing issues like "making sure our nonprofits (employees) are making a living wage" and "to make sure those most vulnerable people, whether it's a group home with developmental disabilities or children waiting in hospitals for beds or people with mental health issues — these are things I believe we have an obligation to take care of, and this will allow us to do some of that."

Criminal justice

State Rep. Greg Howard, R-Stonington, is, as he puts it, somebody the party "leans on" in the area of public safety; he is a police officer in Stonington, a ranking member of the public safety committee and a member of the judiciary committee. Since the summer of 2021, Republicans have been pushing for criminal justice reform, specifically when it comes to juveniles.

Some of the Republican proposals around criminal justice call for rolling back provisions from the police accountability bill passed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer in 2020. Since then, Howard said he has had "tough conversations with folks of different communities, of different backgrounds."

"I have had an outstanding dialogue with my Democratic colleagues as well as members of the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus," he said. "I've been trying to bring this issue to a reasonable balance. I don't think there's a police officer in the world who wants a cop protected from wrongdoing. The question is, what is wrongdoing?"

Cheeseman also is on board with Republican crime reform proposals. "How do we best protect all the citizens of our state and not tie the hands of our police?" she asked.

She also wants to revisit what she and other Republicans say is a flawed cannabis legalization law. "If you're a young person caught with up to 5 ounces of marijuana, which is enough for 400 joints, not until the third time you are caught — not arrested but taken in by police — are the judicial review boards or the youth services bureaus are notified," she said. "If you've got 5 ounces on you, you're probably not a casual smoker, you're probably dealing."

State Rep. Mike France, R-Ledyard, said juvenile justice reform is one of his top issues. "We've seen a lot of focus on the police accountability bill and the consequences of that piece of legislation in how police approach the job, how safe our communities are as a result of those actions," he said. "The consequences of what past legislatures have done with juvenile justice need to be reviewed."

Howard said he also would be focusing on issues related to children and education, specifically catching up kids in school who were affected by the coronavirus pandemic. "We need to get the behavioral health spike that we've seen since the beginning of the pandemic under control," he said.

Nolan, a New London police officer, also is interested in juvenile justice reform but not necessarily what Republicans have proposed. "A lot of times we're on different sides because it seems like — not all Republicans — but they want to see more penalization and arrests rather than helping the kids," he said. "If that's not the case, I wish they would come have a conversation."

State projects, transparency

In announcing on Monday that he would be running for reelection, Nolan said he will be focused on State Pier, which is being converted to a hub for wind power, and other regional issues. "I'm just trying to continue what we started and go up there and further fight for things we feel like New London should either have or be part of, especially with the State Pier. My focus is on jobs for this area, and try and make sure that the training pipeline for jobs starts with considering people from the New London and Groton area."

"Our city is booming with development, yet so many families continue to struggle with bills, medical costs and child care," he added.

Formica recently announced he would not be seeking reelection. But as Senate Republican leader pro tempore, he will have a busy final session. He's expecting debate on extending Lamont's executive powers regarding the pandemic as well as possible school regionalization initiatives, which he opposes.

As he has done every year since he's been in the Senate, he is introducing a bill "trying to move Seaside forward in one form or another." It's been about three decades since Seaside, a former center for the developmentally disabled and now a designated state park, was vacated. Since then, the state has attempted to attract developers to convert the property's historical buildings into a resort, apartments, condominiums and the like.

"I will tell you I'm happy that we've had more conversations with DEEP in the last six to eight months than we've had for a while," Formica said. "DEEP indicated they're looking for federal funding to try to do something with it. But I just want to keep it on the forefront. It's been demolition by neglect over the last two-plus decades."

France, who is challenging Democrat U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney for the 2nd District seat and will step down from his state representative position after this term, said in addition to criminal justice reform, he has two main focuses for this session: "First is to make sure the Capitol and the legislative office building are open to the public."

"I think there are people that while going virtual provided opportunities for some, there were others who were removed from the process because they don't have access to technology," he said.

Government transparency is the second of France's top three priorities. "We had a lot of money coming in from the federal government. ... There is indication that some of the money appropriated and authorized by the legislature still has not been allocated out to the appropriate agencies or to towns or nonprofits," he said. "Really diving into whether that money that was directed to go to certain places actually got there."

State Reps. Joe de la Cruz, D-Groton, Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, Devin Carney, R-Old Lyme, Kathleen McCarty, R-Waterford, and Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin, could not be reached to comment.

s.spinella@theday.com