The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-02-01

Now that the biennial rush of bills into the General Assembly has halted, the ladies and gentle men who sit in the upper and lower houses at Hartford can settle, down to considering the passage of needed legislation. The rush of measures which their sponsors hope will be enacted into law reached its crest yester- day, the last day for the introduc- tion of bills.
 A notable feature has been the large number of applications and near-duplicatiOnS. Scores of bills have been offered on the same general subjects, and the texts have been almost identical in many of them. There are half- dozen proposed state labor rela- tiOns acts, as many or more wages and hours bills, four or five Sav- ings bank insurance bills, a dozen or SO fOrbidding BundS and un- American organizations and prac- tices, and so on.
 The Republicans have been at- tempting to look into the future by guessing what bills the Dem ocratS planned to offer and then getting their own bills on the same subjects in first. This has been true of the state defense sys- tenn bill, the state probation bill and several more. It's all part of the G. o. P. program to be able to claim credit for any progressive legislation that is adopted at the 1941 session but the tactics have been so obvious that most Capitol observers just yawn at the in- tended strategy.
 Refusing to hide behind gen. eralizations as to administration policy and plans, Governor Hurley sent to the legislature this week 8 carefully worked out, cOncretely worded legislative program em- bracing the Democratic party platform, his campaign pledges and the recommendations made in his inaugural address. The governors program has been sub mitted almost in full, the most im- portant omission being his state labor relations bill, which he de- layed pending further conferences with the c. I. o. and the A. F. of l..
 The governor leaves the next steps to the legislature but he has made it plain that he will coun- tenance no undue delays, espe- cially those resulting from purely partisan opposition. It is a good bet that 8 large share of the gov- ernog's proposals will be adopted, though no doubt with Republicans claiming credit for many of them. The rest of MT. Hurley's program, however, will find rocky going in the lower house, and the blocking of this portion may find the gov- ernor taking to the radio and the press to denounce the opposition.
 Newspapermen at the Capitol find the opening weeks of this session of the legislature the most puzzling in years. As far as bills are concerned there seems little difference between the two parties; in fact, in some instances the Republicans seem to be try- ing to "Outliberalize" the Demo crats. But the pull of conservatism will prove too strong in the rank and file before the session has gone along much further, and then wo can expect to see some fun within the c. O. P. legisla- tive circle. Republican leaders declarations that there would be no "Obstructionism" at this ses- sion have not quite been borne out So far, and no one knows what the next few months at Hartford may hold
 Waterbury's most pressing pOliti- cal problem of the moment seems to be the proposal for a city bond issue to finance capital improve ments and to set up debt refund- ing on . long range basis. The situation offers another 1lustra- ton of what labels can do. Con- troller COnlOn, after studying city finances and the possibility of needed major improvements since last fall, decided that issuance of '.refunding bonds" was the best solution. There were objections
 (not too many) but most of these would probably have been fore stalled had the proposed bonds been called capital improvement bonds" or given some similar title.
 It didn't matter that the pro- posed "refunding bonds" weren't intended to allow the city admin istration to reduce the tax rate temporarily by selling bonds every two years Gas Jasper McLevy has done in Bridgeport; the fact that they were called by that name was enough to set critics on the rampage fearing a municipal financial hocus-pocus that would leave the taxpayer holding the bag.
 The basic question is whether the capital improvements being talked about are needed, whether Waterbury needs a second pipe line from Morris, a municipal in- cinerator and the other projects that are mentioned. If they are needed, and there seems general agreement that they are, it comes down to a question of paying for them out of current income (which means raising the tax rate) or meeting the costs with proceeds from bond sales.
 Controller Conlon believes he has found a method whereby the im- provements can be paid for, by means of annual bond sales over a 12-year period. without upset ting the city's financial standing and yet bringing about a net re- duction in the city debt. His sug- gestion Is one that deserves the