Many significant and far-reaching pieces of legislation were debated and passed by the General Assembly throughout the 2013 legislative session, which adjourned last week. In order to better inform you about this legislation, the non-partisan Office of Legislative Research (OLR) has released summaries of the ‘2013 Major Public Acts.’

To view the report, please click here.

Some of the topics outlined in the report include: campaign finance reform, minimum wage, job creation, firearms regulations, the state budget and GMOs.

These summaries are intended to be brief and are by no means extensive explanations. OLR will release much more detailed summaries of all public acts later this summer.

HARTFORD — State Rep. Sean Williams early Sunday voted against a two-year budget from Democrats that relies on an “unprecedented” accounting gimmick to stay below the Constitutional Spending Cap while delaying the governor’s often-promised move to more transparent accounting principles, also raiding transportation funds and generating new revenue from the introduction of Keno gambling and a 16 percent gas tax hike this summer.

Williams, ranking House Republican leader on the Finance Committee, said the patchwork budget will keep Connecticut on uncertain fiscal ground for the foreseeable future. The plan passed along party lines in a 5:15 a.m. vote, continuing an unfortunate trend that has the state’s most important issues decided while residents are asleep.

What should be most concerning to residents, Williams said, is the majority party’s flippant, politics-driven decision to shift $6 billion in Medicaid spending outside the spending cap. Because spending on health care for the poor would be outside of the budget, Democrats contend their two-year plan is $37.6 billion rather than a cap-busting $44 billion. Democrat leaders recently abandoned earlier budget plans and pursued that accounting shift, labeled “unprecedented” in media reports, because they didn’t have enough in-house support to exceed the cap according to rules created when it was approved in 1990 as a companion to the controversial state income tax.

“Too many Democrats feared constituent criticism if they exceeded the cap, so they simply made up their own rules,” Williams said. “They’ve charted a new course, and everyone in this state should be concerned about where it will lead. We’ll be back here two years from now tackling the same issues—made worse by this budget.”

To balance their plan, Democrats swept $90 million in transportation-related money into the general fund and, in a surprise move, did the same with energy conservation funds created in legislation only hours earlier. They targeted many other specialized accounts in one-shot budget balancing maneuvers, including $25 million from the banking fund, $12 million from the tobacco and health trust fund, and this year’s entire $220 million surplus.

“The unfortunate story told by this budget is that Connecticut’s legislature is controlled by a group of people simply unwilling to make anything close to resembling a difficult choice to put our state on the right track,” Williams said. “They’re spending not only as they always have, but at even higher levels—and they’ve used nearly every gimmick and revenue grab within arm’s reach to do it. At some point, we’re all going to pay for it.”

The budget plan from Democrats delays by two years governor’s promise to switch to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, a more transparent method of accounting that assigns government expenses and revenues to the year in which they are incurred. If that method was used today, state finances would be in deep deficit.

In addition to refinancing $1 billion in operating debt, the budget also cancels nearly $400 million in payments over the next two years—pushing off the payments until after the next gubernatorial election.

The budget controversially extends a surcharge on corporate profits that the businesses had expected to expire.