Connecticut Delegation Ranks High on Environment
By Sara Hatch
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 – The Connecticut delegation scored in the top five percent of all members of Congress on an environmental scorecard released Tuesday by the League of Conservation Voters. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., with a score of 90 percent, tied for the third-highest score in the Senate on key environmental votes during 2005.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., scored 70 percent, a 14-point increase from his combined score for 2003-04. Both senators were well above the national average of 45 percent for both the House and Senate.
The scorecard evaluates important environmental votes in the past year and whether members made what the league considers environmentally friendly votes.
“The entire delegation deserves praise for their record of bipartisan support for protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling and protecting public lands,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, the league’s legislative director, said in a press release.
The delegation’s high ranking among the states on environmental issues was confirmed by Mark Sokolove, the league’s press secretary.
Rep. Rob Simmons, R-Conn., who voted against Arctic drilling, scored 61 percent. This was much higher than the average 11 percent score for Republicans in the House.
Curt Johnson, the senior attorney and program director for the Connecticut
Fund for the Environment, said the Republican Party “as a whole has turned its back almost entirely on the environmental agenda.”
A statement issued by Dodd’s office said he “believes that protecting our environment should be a top priority. But sadly, there are too many in Washington that fail to realize that. Sen. Dodd intends to continue to work to support initiatives that can make our environment cleaner for both the current and future generations.”
Lieberman’s communications director, Casey Aden-Wansbury, said that “throughout his career, he “has won high scores” from the league, and that his relatively low score in 2003-04 was because of “several votes he was forced to miss for family reasons.” On only two votes did he differ from the league’s position, Aden-Wansbury said, on the final vote on last year’s energy bill and on a farm appropriations amendment.
The scorecard “casts an unbiased eye” on the House and Senate, said Tony Massaro, the league’s senior vice president for political affairs and public education, at a press conference Tuesday.
Massaro said 2005 had been a year with “major legislative attacks on our government.” He criticized the energy bill as one of the worst environmental bills to come out of Washington and said that “in the end, many members chose the powerful over the people.”
The league addressed the larger energy issue in its scorecard, with almost half of the key votes in each chamber concerning energy policy.
“Everybody in the delegation understands that we need serious changes in energy policy,” Dennis Schain, spokesman for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, said in a telephone interview.
“I think everybody understands that we need to find a new direction with energy policy,” he said..
Connecticut, he said, faces energy problems at the pump and at home, including increases in the price of natural gas.
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