CONNECTICUT: Finch Bids State Senate Farewell

CONNECTICUT POST
January 22, 2008

Finch Bids State Senate Farewell
by Ken Dixon, kdixon.connpost@snet.net


HARTFORD — Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch commemorated his final day in the Senate on Tuesday by thanking lawmakers for their friendship over the last six years, then warned them to combat the threat of global warming.

Finch, who planned to resign at the end of the one-day special session on criminal-justice reforms, also asked lawmakers to change state law and let adoptive children get their birth certificates at age 21.

During a 10-minute valedictory address, Finch said he's looking forward to concentrating on being mayor of the state's largest city, but he'll still journey to the Capitol to lobby for urban issues.

Meanwhile, challengers for the vacant seat, the winner of which will be determined in a mid-March district vote, began lining up Tuesday, led by Rep. T.R. Rowe, R-Trumbull.

"My love for my hometown, our region, and its people is what drives me as a state representative, and it is what will guide me as your state senator," Rowe said Tuesday in a statement.

Finch, standing before his Senate colleagues, said that a pending state Supreme Court decision on last September's Democratic mayoral primary in Bridgeport still has him "in limbo," but he decided last week to resign the Senate, which he joined in 2001.

"I made a decision, even though my position was to wait for the Supreme Court, we have separate but equal branches of government and they have to go by their time line and their time line is not our time line," said Finch. "So I changed my mind and made this decision so that we could go on with the business of government not only running the City of Bridgeport, but to have a new voice from the 22nd District."

Finch said he has "tremendous respect" for the 36-member Senate, where members may disagree, but don't hold grudges. "This could be ground zero for civility in American politics, moving into a new generation," said Finch, the son of a steelworker who recalled he could barely afford UConn when he was a teenager.

"The Senate means a great deal to me," said Finch, who last year was co-chairman of the Environment Committee. "It's been part of my life. It's been giving me meaning."

He said that as mayor of a coastal city, he's concerned with the issue of global warming and the melting ice caps threatening Bridgeport with rising water.

"We don't have a lot of time and we certainly have no time for partisanship on this issue and I'm glad to say that we've had very little of that in the Environment Committee," Finch said

In recent years the General Assembly has failed to adopt legislation sponsored by Finch that would require the release of adoptive birth certificates at age 21. Finch, who was adopted, said that between 100,000 and 250,000 Connecticut residents might be eligible for birth certificates that they are currently prohibited from seeing.

"Our law demands that they cannot have the right to their identity," Finch said.

"Our law says that adult adoptees cannot handle the truth," he said. "Our law says that they must go to their grave without ever knowing their mother or father and our law says they are not entitled to their medical history. Our law says bad things and it must be changed."

Senate President Pro Tempore Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, said Finch's farewell requests were not unexpected.

"It would be just like Sen. Finch to leave us with a to-do list," Williams quipped before the Senate adjourned for caucuses to discuss the criminal justice reform proposals at 11:30 a.m.

Finch's announcement last week that he'd leave the Senate before the 13-week budget-adjustment session begins on Feb. 6 has set off a chain of potential hopefuls to take over the 22nd District seat that represents the west side of Bridgeport, Trumbull and part of Monroe.

Nancy DiNardo of Trumbull, chairwoman of the Democratic State Central Committee, said that she expects many people. "I'm hearing a number of names," she said in an interview in the Capitol.

Interested Democratic candidates include Thomas A. Mulligan Jr., an attorney and Bridgeport City Council member; Hector Diaz Jr., a former state representative from Bridgeport; Anthony J. Musto, Trumbull's town treasurer; Stephen P. Wright, chairman of the Trumbull Board of Education; and Michelle Mount of Monroe, who was Bridgeport's legislative liaison to the General Assembly last year.

The special election would be held 45 days after Gov. M. Jodi Rell declares a vacancy. It's expected to be held on March 11 or 18. The upcoming legislative session starts Feb. 6 and ends May 7.

Democrats and Republicans will hold nominating conventions to pick candidates. There are no primaries, but other candidates could petition onto the ballot.

Rep. Jack F. Hennessy, D-Bridgeport, said Tuesday he is mulling a petition campaign to get on the ballot. "It's too bad the Democratic Town Committee will not consider such a good candidate as I," Hennessy, who doesn't expect the support of the town committee, said Tuesday.

Chris Healy, Republican state chairman, said in an interview Tuesday that Rowe is an "excellent" candidate.

"He has a great record on fiscal matters and education matters and I think he'd be a great addition to the Senate," Healy said. "He's clear and strong in his beliefs. If he's the nominee, we'll work morning, noon and night to make him successful."

Rowe said that even in the current economic climate, there's opportunity for the district.

"By finding innovative ways to pool and integrate our economic and cultural resources, we can revitalize our urban communities, grow our local economy an


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