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Today we are in special session a week before Christmas to vote on two pieces of legislation but NOT a transportation/toll plan that the governor is advocating. We are told to prepare for a January special session on transportation/tolls. We shall see!
One is a bill to clarify existing law on wages for restaurant workers. A number of restaurants have been hit with class action lawsuits because of the advice the Department of Labor (DOL) has been giving them since 2015. Those DOL guidelines essentially say restaurant owners don’t need to keep track of all the side-work servers do when they’re not waiting on customers as long as they don’t spend more than 20 percent of their time on those tasks. The governor vetoed the proposal that the legislature supported in June and we will again pass a legislative fix the governor plans to sign.
The other bill is a negotiated hospital lawsuit settlement that if not resolved could have cost the state as much as $4 billion. The state hospitals had sued the state after former Gov. Malloy expanded a controversial provider tax to hospitals.
