There’s no shortage of gimmicks and handouts from lobbying groups trying to get legislators to understand their positions. Clean energy boosters give rides in a fuel cell-powered bus, while dairy farmers offer cheese samples.
But Jay Kehoe takes things a big step further. He Tasers people.
People like the head of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.
Whom he took down with a Taser in the middle of a public hearing at the Legislative Office Building.
A former Glastonbury police officer, Kehoe is a lobbyist for Taser International, based in Scottsdale, Ariz. As an East Coast representative, he has been to Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut and other states touting the safety and effectiveness of Tasers as a tool of law enforcement and self defense.
“Electronic defense weapons,” the unbranded term for Tasers, incapacitate a person’s muscles for five seconds by pumping an electric shock through two metal prongs that can be fired from up to 30 feet away.
The most basic version available, the Taser C2, looks like a plastic gun, sells for $299.95 and comes with a training DVD. You can get it in one of four snazzy colors: Black Pearl, Titanium Silver, Electric Blue or –- for the ladies — Metallic Pink.
Close to 10,000 Tasers are in use by law enforcement across the country. Unlike pepper spray, Kehoe argues, Tasers are effective no matter what part of the body they hit. Unlike guns, he says, Tasers are non-lethal.
“The Taser has never been identified as the cause of death for anybody,” he said.
Misconceptions
Kehoe’s job is made much more difficult by a handful of rather graphic displays of Taser abuse by law enforcement officials that have been posted on the Internet, many of which lead to glaring newspaper headlines and what he views as misconceptions among the public. When Kehoe came to testify in front of the General Assembly’s judiciary committee March 16, he said there were “all kinds of misconceptions” among committee members as to the danger of Tasers.
One of the people who has been watching those videos is Rep. Michael P. Lawlor (D-East Haven), the committee’s co-chair. A former state prosecutor, Lawlor favors a bill restricting sale of the devices to law enforcement officials.
“I don’t think that private citizens should have them. It just isn’t appropriate,” Lawlor said. He and the committee are also considering a bill with new rules for police, aimed at preventing Taser misuse of the Internet-video variety.
So with the two anti-Taser measures on the table, Kehoe came to the committee to make his pitch. And, seeing Lawlor’s skepticism in his product, he made a bold offer, or one might say, a dare.
How would Lawlor like to be Tasered, right then and there?
Not one to back down, Lawlor accepted. In the middle of a room normally reserved for drawn-out judicial nominations, he removed his tie and dress shirt and stood ready in his undershirt.
Kehoe’s Taser performed as advertised. When the prongs stuck into his back, Lawlor let loose a groan and dropped hard into the waiting arms of volunteers immediately beside him like he was being saved by a televangelist.
Afterward Lawlor said it felt like he’d been mechanically and soundly punched in the back for five straight seconds, paralyzing him.
“There’s a little bit of blood on your T-shirt, but it doesn’t really hurt,” he said. Lawlor recovered in just a few minutes.
For Kehoe, the Tasering was an impressively bold move that brought terrific drama, but also a lot of risk. No matter how much he believes in his product –- and how clearly that belief is communicated by the demonstration –- isn’t there some risk to publicly decapacitating the committee chair?
Kehoe, who drives a Hummer with the license plate TASER, doesn’t think so. He said he’d done it thousands of times to prove the device’s safety.
“I’ve Tasered legislators, news reporters, judges. I’ve Tasered probably 3,500 people,” he said.
“You never truly understand it until you get a hit from a Taser.”
Unfortunately for the company, the device doesn’t seem to have had the intended political effect on Lawlor. He said that although the Taser was far less painful than a stun gun (which he has also experienced), if he had not had volunteers beside him he could have seriously cracked his skull on the fall.
“It didn’t really change my views. It’s not much different than I thought,” he said. n
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Some Lobbyists Say Land-Use Regs Are Just Hooey
In every Connecticut town, residents have a different idea about what they should see when they look out the window.
Should it be a city street? Suburbs? A forest? A farm?
But as towns take more of a say in how land should be used, business becomes more difficult for industries that require large tracts of acreage.
That struggle has united two industries, farmers and home builders, against the growing number of towns passing new rules limiting business’ use of land.
Farmers who have been working the same land for generations are facing new rules and proposed rules about how large they can build new barns, how they clear space for fields and how they control livestock and chickens.
“We’re seeing just more and more attempts to curtail how land use is utilized,” said Bonnie E. Burr, lobbyist for the Connecticut Farm Bureau.
For builders, keeping track of 169 different inklings isn’t easy. The group considers local zoning changes a severe clamp on business and a sort of war on suburbia. On the group’s Web site, one can learn about books such as “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”
Seeking Solon Solace
So as more towns become unhappy with what they see out their windows, more bills that would restrict land use have found their way to the General Assembly. One would give towns greater control over wetlands, which would keep farmers from clearing trees from and planting on certain parts of their land, and prevent developers from building anything there.
So it follows that the farmers consider groups like the Homebuilders Association of Connecticut important allies in the lobbying fight.
“They are usually with us because it’s about what you can do with the land,” Burr said.
Should the two groups win the land use battle however, don’t expect them to remain buddy-buddy too much longer.
Because it isn’t just ideological wetlands-lovers who are driving new rules in the legislature, it’s the people buying the new homes. Or, in other words, the customers of the homebuilders.
The influx of those who want nice, big pseudo-country houses in the formerly rural parts of the state drives big business to homebuilders. But they are the very same people who complain about farms to town leaders.
When they decide where to build their new homes, people love to choose romantic spots in the country. Looking out at a quaint family farm sounds particularly nice.
What they don’t realize –- or care about — is that those farms are businesses, and in a lot of cases struggling businesses that might need to make changes to stay afloat.
Agri-biz
Dairy farmer Paul Miller said a new rule in Pomfret has kept him from adding a new barn because of a restriction on building anything more than 10,000 square feet. He said residents complain about the noise of machinery and even the idea to change a stonewall fence, which might look nice, to a fence that functioned much better.
Meanwhile, he said he took out a $300,000 loan recently “just to pay the bills.”
“They want to be able to look at a nice green field, but they don’t want anyone to spread manure on it,” Miller said.
In some cases, the residents who pester town leaders to quiet down the local farms are also becoming the town leaders. That’s a problem for Burr.
In the Farm Bureau’s newsletter last month, the group complained that town officials today have no understanding of the farmer’s perspective.
“We can no longer assume elected officials have any farm experience at all,” it read.
Burr said fewer elected officials in both towns and the state have “hard experience with land use.” “It can take a while making sure they get trained,” she said.
Maybe residents would prefer that farmers like Miller would just go away, as they are doing in government. And maybe they will. But guess who’s calling the farmers on the phone, offering higher and higher prices for struggling farmland?
That’s right: the homebuilders.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Should it be a city street? Suburbs? A forest? A farm?
But as towns take more of a say in how land should be used, business becomes more difficult for industries that require large tracts of acreage.
That struggle has united two industries, farmers and home builders, against the growing number of towns passing new rules limiting business’ use of land.
Farmers who have been working the same land for generations are facing new rules and proposed rules about how large they can build new barns, how they clear space for fields and how they control livestock and chickens.
“We’re seeing just more and more attempts to curtail how land use is utilized,” said Bonnie E. Burr, lobbyist for the Connecticut Farm Bureau.
For builders, keeping track of 169 different inklings isn’t easy. The group considers local zoning changes a severe clamp on business and a sort of war on suburbia. On the group’s Web site, one can learn about books such as “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life.”
Seeking Solon Solace
So as more towns become unhappy with what they see out their windows, more bills that would restrict land use have found their way to the General Assembly. One would give towns greater control over wetlands, which would keep farmers from clearing trees from and planting on certain parts of their land, and prevent developers from building anything there.
So it follows that the farmers consider groups like the Homebuilders Association of Connecticut important allies in the lobbying fight.
“They are usually with us because it’s about what you can do with the land,” Burr said.
Should the two groups win the land use battle however, don’t expect them to remain buddy-buddy too much longer.
Because it isn’t just ideological wetlands-lovers who are driving new rules in the legislature, it’s the people buying the new homes. Or, in other words, the customers of the homebuilders.
The influx of those who want nice, big pseudo-country houses in the formerly rural parts of the state drives big business to homebuilders. But they are the very same people who complain about farms to town leaders.
When they decide where to build their new homes, people love to choose romantic spots in the country. Looking out at a quaint family farm sounds particularly nice.
What they don’t realize –- or care about — is that those farms are businesses, and in a lot of cases struggling businesses that might need to make changes to stay afloat.
Agri-biz
Dairy farmer Paul Miller said a new rule in Pomfret has kept him from adding a new barn because of a restriction on building anything more than 10,000 square feet. He said residents complain about the noise of machinery and even the idea to change a stonewall fence, which might look nice, to a fence that functioned much better.
Meanwhile, he said he took out a $300,000 loan recently “just to pay the bills.”
“They want to be able to look at a nice green field, but they don’t want anyone to spread manure on it,” Miller said.
In some cases, the residents who pester town leaders to quiet down the local farms are also becoming the town leaders. That’s a problem for Burr.
In the Farm Bureau’s newsletter last month, the group complained that town officials today have no understanding of the farmer’s perspective.
“We can no longer assume elected officials have any farm experience at all,” it read.
Burr said fewer elected officials in both towns and the state have “hard experience with land use.” “It can take a while making sure they get trained,” she said.
Maybe residents would prefer that farmers like Miller would just go away, as they are doing in government. And maybe they will. But guess who’s calling the farmers on the phone, offering higher and higher prices for struggling farmland?
That’s right: the homebuilders.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Ticket Scalping Less Shady
For many of us, it ranks among jaywalking and speeding as a crime that most of us wouldn’t mind breaking –- especially if we can make 20 bucks off it.
And it seems the General Assembly might agree, at least this time around.
Ticket scalping, long an important revenue stream for shady guys standing outside the Hartford Civic Center on event nights, has become big business for Web sites that allow consumers to buy and sell tickets online, and charge commissions for it.
Not surprisingly, many such sales are for more than the face-value of tickets, which makes them illegal in Connecticut (unless the difference is only $3 or less).
Scalping isn’t considered altogether kosher behavior, particularly when brokers buy large blocks of tickets with the sole intent of reselling them for more.
That was the feeling of Sen. Thomas A. Colapietro (D-Bristol), co-chair of the General Law committee, who said at a public hearing last month that he was worried that “only rich people” would be able to pay $200 for a $25 ticket.
“I’m worried about the guy that sleeps outside the ticket window to get his tickets so that the broker can make more money off of it,” Colapietro said.
The practice also raised the ire of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who pushed the online reseller StubHub to create a popup window on its site with a reminder that scalping by businesses or residents in the state was illegal. Sort of like a “Speed Limit: 55” highway sign.
It turns out that Connecticut has its own “ticket reseller” in Vernon, called Ticket Network, and that reseller has a lobbying firm (Murtha Cullina). Ticket Network facilitates ticket deals between brokers, as well as for the general public through the Web site Ticketliquidator.com.
More importantly, it employs 117 people.
Because the company is headquartered in Connecticut, Tickets Network is barred from facilitating scalping of Connecticut events.
“Basically, it was going to be too hard to operate it for Connecticut residents and comply with the law,” Nicholas Eve, an executive vice president for the company, said in an interview.
Of course resellers from other states, including StubHub (in California), eBay (same), Ticketmaster (New England headquarters in Massachusetts) and TicketsNow (Illinois) have no problem jumping in and jacking up the prices of UConn basketball games, Bushnell performances and, of course, Justin Timerblake concerts.
And soon after Murtha Cullina marched Eve before the committee to tell them he was losing business, scalping suddenly became less about ticket prices for the little guy, and more about jobs for the little guy.
Colapietro, who had been so skeptical about the fairness of the scalping business in mid-February, moved with the rest of the committee last week to completely remove the scalping ban, except for profit-making deals made within 1,500 feet of an event on the day it is taking place (meaning the shady guys will have to remain shady).
Because of an administrative screw-up, the bill would need to be attached to another measure to pass, but Colapietro said he would consider doing so, paving the way for the public to buy and sell tickets at whatever price they like (even if only rich people can afford it). This is okay with Colapietro, provided that the local companies make a buck.
“I just felt like our guys were being treated unfair,” Colapietro said, referring to the local reseller this time, not the consumer.
He even let it be known that he didn’t appreciate the lobbying efforts of Ticketmaster’s Michael Norton, who he said “looked like a butler.”
“This guy comes in from California or Massachusetts or wherever and tells us what we should be doing. I call him the butler,” Colapietro said.
If the bill does pass, Eve will enjoy the opportunity not only to drive over 65 from New Haven (where he lives) to Vernon every day, but to help consumers sell tickets at whatever price they like. He said research showed that scalping was low on a list of lawbreaking that the public didn’t approve of.
“Ticket scalping shows up pretty low on that list. After, I think, speeding,” he said.
It looks like he’s right.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
And it seems the General Assembly might agree, at least this time around.
Ticket scalping, long an important revenue stream for shady guys standing outside the Hartford Civic Center on event nights, has become big business for Web sites that allow consumers to buy and sell tickets online, and charge commissions for it.
Not surprisingly, many such sales are for more than the face-value of tickets, which makes them illegal in Connecticut (unless the difference is only $3 or less).
Scalping isn’t considered altogether kosher behavior, particularly when brokers buy large blocks of tickets with the sole intent of reselling them for more.
That was the feeling of Sen. Thomas A. Colapietro (D-Bristol), co-chair of the General Law committee, who said at a public hearing last month that he was worried that “only rich people” would be able to pay $200 for a $25 ticket.
“I’m worried about the guy that sleeps outside the ticket window to get his tickets so that the broker can make more money off of it,” Colapietro said.
The practice also raised the ire of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who pushed the online reseller StubHub to create a popup window on its site with a reminder that scalping by businesses or residents in the state was illegal. Sort of like a “Speed Limit: 55” highway sign.
It turns out that Connecticut has its own “ticket reseller” in Vernon, called Ticket Network, and that reseller has a lobbying firm (Murtha Cullina). Ticket Network facilitates ticket deals between brokers, as well as for the general public through the Web site Ticketliquidator.com.
More importantly, it employs 117 people.
Because the company is headquartered in Connecticut, Tickets Network is barred from facilitating scalping of Connecticut events.
“Basically, it was going to be too hard to operate it for Connecticut residents and comply with the law,” Nicholas Eve, an executive vice president for the company, said in an interview.
Of course resellers from other states, including StubHub (in California), eBay (same), Ticketmaster (New England headquarters in Massachusetts) and TicketsNow (Illinois) have no problem jumping in and jacking up the prices of UConn basketball games, Bushnell performances and, of course, Justin Timerblake concerts.
And soon after Murtha Cullina marched Eve before the committee to tell them he was losing business, scalping suddenly became less about ticket prices for the little guy, and more about jobs for the little guy.
Colapietro, who had been so skeptical about the fairness of the scalping business in mid-February, moved with the rest of the committee last week to completely remove the scalping ban, except for profit-making deals made within 1,500 feet of an event on the day it is taking place (meaning the shady guys will have to remain shady).
Because of an administrative screw-up, the bill would need to be attached to another measure to pass, but Colapietro said he would consider doing so, paving the way for the public to buy and sell tickets at whatever price they like (even if only rich people can afford it). This is okay with Colapietro, provided that the local companies make a buck.
“I just felt like our guys were being treated unfair,” Colapietro said, referring to the local reseller this time, not the consumer.
He even let it be known that he didn’t appreciate the lobbying efforts of Ticketmaster’s Michael Norton, who he said “looked like a butler.”
“This guy comes in from California or Massachusetts or wherever and tells us what we should be doing. I call him the butler,” Colapietro said.
If the bill does pass, Eve will enjoy the opportunity not only to drive over 65 from New Haven (where he lives) to Vernon every day, but to help consumers sell tickets at whatever price they like. He said research showed that scalping was low on a list of lawbreaking that the public didn’t approve of.
“Ticket scalping shows up pretty low on that list. After, I think, speeding,” he said.
It looks like he’s right.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Pulling The Trigger On 'Trigger Leads'
Don't look now but one of the most regulation-loathing industries out there is lobbying to get itself more heavily policed: the banks.
So much for the free market.
It seems some mortgage lenders have taken up the practice of buying leads from credit reporting agencies so they can poach the business of home buyers who are having their credit checks run. Customers who have decided on a bank for a mortgage find themselves getting ambushed by pitches from other lenders and marketers, offering (however implausibly) to beat whatever rate the customer has been offered.
Testifying before the Banks Committee, Rockville Bank President William J. McGurk said the practice allowed invasive lenders and brokers to siphon off business that the original banker had spent weeks or months developing, and compared the experience to setting tomato plants in the spring and nurturing them all summer.
"Then in August, somebody comes by and steals my nice, ripe, red tomatoes," McGurk said.
Either that, or the customer blames the bank for leaking their application information, which doesn't help in building customer trust.
"When a customer submits an application, they expect privacy," McGurk said.
So now the bankers are trying to crack down on themselves for using "trigger leads," as they call them.
The Connecticut Bankers Association had its lobbyists - CBA Vice President Thomas Mongellow and Richard "Fritz" Conway, of Gaffney Bennett -- help draft a bill that would prohibit brokers or lenders (a.k.a. the association's own members) from using leads from credit reports.
It seems a bit like asking mom to please stop allowing you to shoplift, and then spending a lot of money to convince her.
But state Rep. Ryan Barry (D-Manchester), co-chair of the Banks Committee, was happy to comply. An attorney whose clients include mortgage applicants, Barry said the practice amounted to "a trampling of people's privacy rights."
Clients "complain to me that they had gone through a bank for a mortgage, then within a day or two they had gotten an onslaught of offers by mail or by phone from other lenders or brokers," he said.
Also firmly in support are the usual industry watchdogs, Banking Commissioner Howard F. Pitkin and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, both of whom often find themselves on the other side of the banks when new regulatory ideas come up.
But not in this case. In addition to the Connecticut Bankers Association, other associations paying to keep their own members in line are the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association (another Gaffney Bennett client) and the Connecticut Society of Mortgage Brokers.
Conway said it could be that a lot of the trigger lead users were from out of state, but that he was sure that "some of the members that we have on board" were among the culprits, though they won't be raising their hands to identify themselves.
Source Of Contention
"There seem to be some who either used it at one time or know someone who used it," Conway said.
Same goes for mortgage brokers. Peter Spalthoff, executive director of the mortgage brokers group, said the use of trigger leads had become a source of contention between members, particularly because two credit bureaus, The Credit Bureau of Connecticut, in West Haven, and Strategic Information Resources, in Springfield, Mass., are members. The first is a sales agent for TransUnion, the second for Experian, two of three national firms that sell leads generated from credit checks. (The other is Equifax.)
"They are getting a lot of flak from the broker industry," Spalthoff said. He said he had received assurances from the two companies that they had no role in leaking or selling customer information, but that hadn't placated everyone.
"We've almost gone to our membership to dump them," Spalthoff said.
Not surprisingly, with all the regulators and all the banks behind it, the bill sailed through the Banks Committee last week. Rep. Barry said he hasn't heard opposition from anyone, much less any self-identified trigger lead users.
"Most of the firms I've talked to said they don't really use them," he said.
Jonathan O'Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
So much for the free market.
It seems some mortgage lenders have taken up the practice of buying leads from credit reporting agencies so they can poach the business of home buyers who are having their credit checks run. Customers who have decided on a bank for a mortgage find themselves getting ambushed by pitches from other lenders and marketers, offering (however implausibly) to beat whatever rate the customer has been offered.
Testifying before the Banks Committee, Rockville Bank President William J. McGurk said the practice allowed invasive lenders and brokers to siphon off business that the original banker had spent weeks or months developing, and compared the experience to setting tomato plants in the spring and nurturing them all summer.
"Then in August, somebody comes by and steals my nice, ripe, red tomatoes," McGurk said.
Either that, or the customer blames the bank for leaking their application information, which doesn't help in building customer trust.
"When a customer submits an application, they expect privacy," McGurk said.
So now the bankers are trying to crack down on themselves for using "trigger leads," as they call them.
The Connecticut Bankers Association had its lobbyists - CBA Vice President Thomas Mongellow and Richard "Fritz" Conway, of Gaffney Bennett -- help draft a bill that would prohibit brokers or lenders (a.k.a. the association's own members) from using leads from credit reports.
It seems a bit like asking mom to please stop allowing you to shoplift, and then spending a lot of money to convince her.
But state Rep. Ryan Barry (D-Manchester), co-chair of the Banks Committee, was happy to comply. An attorney whose clients include mortgage applicants, Barry said the practice amounted to "a trampling of people's privacy rights."
Clients "complain to me that they had gone through a bank for a mortgage, then within a day or two they had gotten an onslaught of offers by mail or by phone from other lenders or brokers," he said.
Also firmly in support are the usual industry watchdogs, Banking Commissioner Howard F. Pitkin and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, both of whom often find themselves on the other side of the banks when new regulatory ideas come up.
But not in this case. In addition to the Connecticut Bankers Association, other associations paying to keep their own members in line are the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association (another Gaffney Bennett client) and the Connecticut Society of Mortgage Brokers.
Conway said it could be that a lot of the trigger lead users were from out of state, but that he was sure that "some of the members that we have on board" were among the culprits, though they won't be raising their hands to identify themselves.
Source Of Contention
"There seem to be some who either used it at one time or know someone who used it," Conway said.
Same goes for mortgage brokers. Peter Spalthoff, executive director of the mortgage brokers group, said the use of trigger leads had become a source of contention between members, particularly because two credit bureaus, The Credit Bureau of Connecticut, in West Haven, and Strategic Information Resources, in Springfield, Mass., are members. The first is a sales agent for TransUnion, the second for Experian, two of three national firms that sell leads generated from credit checks. (The other is Equifax.)
"They are getting a lot of flak from the broker industry," Spalthoff said. He said he had received assurances from the two companies that they had no role in leaking or selling customer information, but that hadn't placated everyone.
"We've almost gone to our membership to dump them," Spalthoff said.
Not surprisingly, with all the regulators and all the banks behind it, the bill sailed through the Banks Committee last week. Rep. Barry said he hasn't heard opposition from anyone, much less any self-identified trigger lead users.
"Most of the firms I've talked to said they don't really use them," he said.
Jonathan O'Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Depositions On Deposits Return To Legislative Halls
In 1978, when the legislature was considering creating a bottle deposit program, a group of Teamsters drove beer trucks around the State Capitol in circles. The idea was to convince legislators not to create a bottle and can deposit program, an idea the Teamsters viewed a serious threat to business.
Among those trucking around was John Hollis, a driver for Hartford Distributors (an Anheuser-Busch affiliate) who doesn’t generally consider himself an environmentalist.
“I eat cooked owl for lunch,” he jokes.
This time around though, as the environment committee mulls an expansion of the deposit program, Hollis has joined the tree huggers. He said that in the 20-plus years since the law passed, more than 300 jobs have been created for warehouse workers, drivers and other positions involved in trucking and processing containers for deposit. Some drivers earn an extra $100 per week picking up the empties.
“Throughout the years, it’s worked. I was wrong,” he said.
Hollis is about the only one who has flipped sides in the battle over whether deposits should be required for containers of water and all other non-carbonated drinks, and whether the deposit should be raised to 10 cents, compared to the 5 cents currently offered for beer and soda containers.
Lined up on one side are some of the state’s biggest buyers of lobbying services, including Pepsi, Coke, Greenwich-based Nestlé Waters North America (owner of Poland Springs) and the Conn. Beer Wholesalers Assoc. Collectively, those companies employ the state’s biggest lobbying teams – Gaffney, Bennett & Associates, Robinson & Cole and Sullivan & LeShane — and none of them wants to see an extra 5 or 10 cents added to their products in Connecticut. They warn that the handling costs of the empties – which the Teamsters welcome - could add to the price of a bottle of water or juice.
Equally concerned are grocery sellers, who aren’t interested in having to store and handle thousands more bottles, as grocers from West Hartford, Manchester and Simsbury showed up to say.
Kids At Play
“None of the members in the association want to be in the garbage business,” said Carrie Rand-Anastasiades, contract lobbyist for the Connecticut Food Association.
On the other side are greenies like the local Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, which trotted in 20 enthusiastic middle- and high-school students from Farmington in green and white t-shirts. The environmentalists believe that recycling rates would be dramatically improved by offering a larger and expanded deposit.
“There’s no question that it’s an incentive for them to be picked up,” said Jessie Stratton for the Sierra Club.
Considering the bill is likely to pass the committee, as it did in 2005, the challenge for the big-money lobbyists, according to Gaffney Bennett’s Lisa Fecke, is to convince members of the House that there are too many other important items on the agenda.
The environmentalists, meanwhile, say they have a commitment from House Speaker James A. Amann (D-Milford) to bring the bill to a vote, and believe rank-and-file House members are coming around to the idea.
“The tide has turned…The people who weren’t with us are beginning to tell us they’re with us,” said Betty McLaughlin for the Audubon Society.
Muddied Waters
But as in most debates at the Capitol, the two sides aren’t as clear cut as one might think.
Even environmentally minded people wonder if the deposit system is really a good way of reducing litter. Most people find it inconvenient to drive trash bags of leaking bottles around to be returned, particularly if they have to cart them home from work first.
Business is not neatly aligned against the idea because of middlemen like the Teamsters and the state’s redemption centers, which collect the containers and sell the material. And considering the current fawning over “green” business, it’s not a great time to be seen as anything less than an energy-saving, fair trade-loving recycler.
Therein may lay a tiny opportunity for compromise. Brian Flaherty, a former state representative now a lobbyist for Nestlé, believes there are better ways to boost recycling (like an expansion of the curbside bin program), but said he wanted to distinguish the company from Coke and Pepsi as open to the idea.
“They’re saying no-no-no. We’re saying if you do it, realize what you’re doing to us. And take a look at what Connecticut’s recycling program really needs,” Flaherty said.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
Among those trucking around was John Hollis, a driver for Hartford Distributors (an Anheuser-Busch affiliate) who doesn’t generally consider himself an environmentalist.
“I eat cooked owl for lunch,” he jokes.
This time around though, as the environment committee mulls an expansion of the deposit program, Hollis has joined the tree huggers. He said that in the 20-plus years since the law passed, more than 300 jobs have been created for warehouse workers, drivers and other positions involved in trucking and processing containers for deposit. Some drivers earn an extra $100 per week picking up the empties.
“Throughout the years, it’s worked. I was wrong,” he said.
Hollis is about the only one who has flipped sides in the battle over whether deposits should be required for containers of water and all other non-carbonated drinks, and whether the deposit should be raised to 10 cents, compared to the 5 cents currently offered for beer and soda containers.
Lined up on one side are some of the state’s biggest buyers of lobbying services, including Pepsi, Coke, Greenwich-based Nestlé Waters North America (owner of Poland Springs) and the Conn. Beer Wholesalers Assoc. Collectively, those companies employ the state’s biggest lobbying teams – Gaffney, Bennett & Associates, Robinson & Cole and Sullivan & LeShane — and none of them wants to see an extra 5 or 10 cents added to their products in Connecticut. They warn that the handling costs of the empties – which the Teamsters welcome - could add to the price of a bottle of water or juice.
Equally concerned are grocery sellers, who aren’t interested in having to store and handle thousands more bottles, as grocers from West Hartford, Manchester and Simsbury showed up to say.
Kids At Play
“None of the members in the association want to be in the garbage business,” said Carrie Rand-Anastasiades, contract lobbyist for the Connecticut Food Association.
On the other side are greenies like the local Sierra Club and the Audubon Society, which trotted in 20 enthusiastic middle- and high-school students from Farmington in green and white t-shirts. The environmentalists believe that recycling rates would be dramatically improved by offering a larger and expanded deposit.
“There’s no question that it’s an incentive for them to be picked up,” said Jessie Stratton for the Sierra Club.
Considering the bill is likely to pass the committee, as it did in 2005, the challenge for the big-money lobbyists, according to Gaffney Bennett’s Lisa Fecke, is to convince members of the House that there are too many other important items on the agenda.
The environmentalists, meanwhile, say they have a commitment from House Speaker James A. Amann (D-Milford) to bring the bill to a vote, and believe rank-and-file House members are coming around to the idea.
“The tide has turned…The people who weren’t with us are beginning to tell us they’re with us,” said Betty McLaughlin for the Audubon Society.
Muddied Waters
But as in most debates at the Capitol, the two sides aren’t as clear cut as one might think.
Even environmentally minded people wonder if the deposit system is really a good way of reducing litter. Most people find it inconvenient to drive trash bags of leaking bottles around to be returned, particularly if they have to cart them home from work first.
Business is not neatly aligned against the idea because of middlemen like the Teamsters and the state’s redemption centers, which collect the containers and sell the material. And considering the current fawning over “green” business, it’s not a great time to be seen as anything less than an energy-saving, fair trade-loving recycler.
Therein may lay a tiny opportunity for compromise. Brian Flaherty, a former state representative now a lobbyist for Nestlé, believes there are better ways to boost recycling (like an expansion of the curbside bin program), but said he wanted to distinguish the company from Coke and Pepsi as open to the idea.
“They’re saying no-no-no. We’re saying if you do it, realize what you’re doing to us. And take a look at what Connecticut’s recycling program really needs,” Flaherty said.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
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