NORWALK, Conn. — There was a hot topic at Monday’s Democratic legislative town hall forum – school vaccinations.
State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-25) and State Reps. Lucy Dathan (D-142), Chris Perone (D-137) and Travis Simms (D-140) also touched on the bottle bill, cannabis and tolls. Duff also briefly addressed questions about building a new Norwalk High School.
Video by Harold Cobin at end of story
Duff cautioned at the outset that the legislative session beginning Feb. 4 is only 13 weeks long. He predicted a special session on transportation before the regular session begins.
While Duff indicated staunch support of vaccinations and for removing the religious exemptions that allow parents to refuse them for their children, Simms said he’s strongly against that idea and Dathan and Simms spoke of nuances.
Opponents who had come to query the legislators on the developing bill proposal were equipped with research, some of it dated. One woman spoke of a 2003 article, touting Connecticut’s immunization rate as best in the nation.
“Since then we’ve had a lot of data,” Duff replied. “…What we’re seeing is lots of lots of places where the numbers are actually coming down, the vaccination rates.”
An October press release from the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) states “that there are now 134 Connecticut schools where the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate for kindergarten students falls below the federally recommended guideline of 95%.”
They represented a 31.1 percent increase in Connecticut schools below the federal guideline, and 41 schools with rates below 90 percent, according to DPH.
“{T}he overall statewide number of religious exemptions to vaccination increased by 25% between the two school years (from 2.0% to 2.5%),” DPH reported. “This represents the largest single year increase in religious exemptions for vaccination since the DPH started tracking the statewide data a decade ago.”
DPH said the overall state rate for kindergartners was 96.1 percent, and the woman challenging Duff charged that the statistics were being manipulated. The statewide vaccination rate was at 91 percent in 2003 and, “It stands to reason that if we’re up as a state overall, then those pockets (of lower vaccination rates) are also up,” she asserted.
Duff said he didn’t have those numbers off the top of his head.
“I’m begging you, please,” she said, after talking of children being expelled because their parents refused vaccinations. “…There are people who cannot afford to give up their jobs and have to make this decision.”
Another member of the public, Franchesca Falciano, asked how removing a “fundamental civil right” would protect children from deadly diseases.
“We’re allowed to parent as we see fit. There are a lot of vaccinations that use people’s cells, DNA from aborted babies, and my religious belief is to not abort. So for me, I have a an ethical dilemma with the reason for vaccination along with a couple of other reasons,” the Cranbury resident said.
Perone said he’s struggled with the issue, the need to balance public health with people’s right to their religious faith.
She pushed him for a yes or a no.
“I don’t even know what the bill says,” Perone replied. “… We’re going to be talking about this thing… This is clearly a work in progress.”
Simms volunteered that he’s “staunchly opposed to the religious exemption bill,” and, “I think that … we should allow the religious folks and individuals, the parents, to speak … on behalf of their own children and own beliefs. I certainly don’t want to put myself in … as God and … vote for bill that will take that exemption away…. this is very treacherous water here.”
Dathan said Perone had a point: “We haven’t seen the bill.”
She couldn’t support it last year because she didn’t like the process, she said. But she’s the parent of three children and, “I have a friend who’s blind because her parents decided not to vaccinate her… that really sticks with me as an individual to see somebody that is scarred as a result of not getting what the medical community deems safe things for us to do.”
She also has a friend “whose daughter had cancer and leukemia, and she was immunocompromised … during the course of her getting her vaccines,” she said. The child’s preschool classmates were all vaccinated and that was the only reason she could attend school for a bit of normality while going through hospitalizations, according to Dathan.
Dathan said she was raised Catholic and the Catholic Church supports vaccinations.
“Again, I really want to see the process and I want to see the bill,” Dathan concluded. “I want to see the language because I think that in order for me to legislate properly… I need to really understand what the language is. So I can’t make a decision. But I’m just giving you a little bit of background where I stand.”
A teenager spoke next, opining, “As a high school senior, I’m so glad that you support vaccinations. I’m scared of going to school with children who don’t have vaccinations.”
Marijuana
Another citizen brought up cannabis, suggesting that legalizing marijuana would generate revenue for a state struggling with deficits.
Perone said there are highs and lows in the revenue provided by cannabis, because it depends on the product mix.
Actually, Dathan said “highs and lows.” Perone said he had been heading for a pun but Dathan beat him.
The conservative estimates on revenue are $41 million a year but, “We just don’t know,” Perone said.
Dathan suggested that the “several years of data” from other states shows “these states making as much as they thought they would.”
“My concern is, do the social costs outweigh that? So I am studying this issue very closely, because I do have a lot of concerns,” Dathan said. “I also feel that if you legalize it, you normalize it.”
“I’ve never advocated for legalizing for a revenue standpoint, because I don’t think that’s a good policy to do that,” Duff said. “However, we need to create our own destiny here.”
Residents can easily drive to other states and get marijuana, he said. If there were an up or down vote, it would easily pass but, “when you get down to the writing a policy on legalization of something that has not been legalized for decades, then it becomes much more complicated because there’s a number of other factors that are that come into play.”
Questions about climate change led to discussion about a proposed bottle bill.
Simms explained that the deposit on bottles would go up to “25 cents or something of that nature.”
“I think that that will that will be something that would allow us to folks to really clean up the areas and clean up this towns and cities and highways,” he said.
Dathan said she’d really like to see that passed. She’d also like to eliminate PFAs – perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl, toxic chemicals known to create health problems – from the water supplies and also pesticide toxins.
The biggest issue with climate change is the energy people use, especially in transportation, Duff observed, going on to tick off Connecticut’s progress, such as doing “the largest procurement of wind energy ever” last year and ensuring that people can use electric cars without fear of running empty.
Other topics
Simms volunteered that he’s opposed tolls since the topic first came up, because it would be a disservice to his constituents.
Duff and other City leaders recently announced that they expect the state to pay 80 percent of the construction costs for a new Norwalk High School, provided that it be a pilot program attracting 100 out-of-town students. Donna Smirniotopoulos tried to pin Duff down on that funding, but her argumentative approach prompted him to cut short his response to her question.
Duff said people all over Norwalk, even on the Brien McMahon High School side of town, are excited about a new high school. Mayor Harry Rilling and Superintendent of Schools Steven Adamowski were involved in developing the idea.
Norwalk Community College and the P-Tech Advisory Council (for the Norwalk Early College Academy, or NECA) made it clear that Bridgeport and Stamford students should have preference to enter the programs, he said.
Afterwards, Duff told NancyOnNorwalk that he’s confident the state will make the unusually high contribution to building the school because Konstantinos (Kosta) Diamantis, Director of the Connecticut Office of School Construction Grants & Review, and Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney (D-11) support it, along with the Norwalk Board of Education, City leaders and the Democratic legislative delegation.
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