Connecticut budget committee OKs free phone calls for prisoners and Gov. Lamont’s broadband expansion bill

A key legislative committee voted overwhelmingly Monday to make telephone calls for Connecticut prison inmates free starting in October 2022.

The budget-writing appropriations committee voted to cover all costs after Gov. Ned Lamont recommended providing $1 million per year to help subsidize the calls because Connecticut has the second-highest rate in the nation for a 15-minute phone call. But Sen. Gary Winfield, a New Haven Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s judiciary committee, and other advocates maintained that the calls should be free. New York City has made the calls free, while other jurisdictions have reduced rates.

Advocates say that maintaining ties to family members is important to the inmates’ mental health — as shown by the impacts of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. This is necessary, they said, as the inmates prepare to reenter society when they are released, including young people who are often from low-income families.

Families currently pay about $13.3 million per year for the calls — with the state receiving nearly $8 million and a prison telephone contractor receiving the rest, officials said. A new telephone contract had been expected to go out to bid in 2022. The state had been expected to drop the price of the calls from 23 cents per minute to 19 cents per minute, but advocates argued that the price reduction was not enough.

The measure still requires approval by the state House of Representatives and state Senate as part of the two-year, $46 billion budget that will be negotiated with Lamont in the coming weeks.

The committee also approved a key priority for Lamont by voting to improve access to broadband internet across the state.

A former cable television entrepreneur, Lamont says improved broadband is important for helping remote learning for education and spurring economic development in rural areas.

The measure would cost $2.9 million per year to hire 15 new state employees in various departments, including 10 at the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, three at the environmental protection department and two at the Office of Consumer Counsel. Broadband companies would pay fees to cover the costs.

“The bill itself is already incorporated into the budget,” said Sen. Cathy Osten, the committee’s co-chair. “It is the governor’s request, and we have not changed his recommendations in the budget.”

With help from the charitable foundation of Greenwich billionaire Ray Dalio, numerous laptops have already been delivered around the state so that students have easier access to the internet and families can participate in telehealth meetings with their doctors during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Broadband is going to be a big priority,” Lamont said earlier this year. “It’s absolutely invaluable for a lot of our towns. If you can do everything ... from Brooklyn, Connecticut, that you can from Brooklyn, New York, you’re going to have a lot more young families, a lot more vibrancy. You don’t have to be in that big city five days a week.”

A longtime Greenwich resident who grew up on Long Island, Lamont said the pandemic has prompted thousands of New Yorkers to flee Manhattan and head to Connecticut for more space and a less-hectic lifestyle. Those New Yorkers have contributed to the economy and have helped spur the red-hot real estate market in many parts of the state, he said.

Lamont is calling for the telecommunications companies to build the infrastructure so that broadband can reach all portions of the state.

“How fast you do that, how that’s positioned, whether that’s hard cable, whether that’s 5G — I’d like to leave that a little bit to the business community,” he said. “That’s the world I come from. They know how to get there perhaps best. We know where we’ve got to go.”

All bills passed Monday are subject to final approval by the legislature before being signed into law by Lamont.

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com