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Health & Fitness

Emergency Certification Procedures Are Being Abused

Improper emergency certification documents could mean hundreds, if not thousands, of laws are void.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of state laws could be deemed void due to improper use of emergency certification procedures.
Branford attorney Peter Sachs, who served as a private investigator for helping track down convicted killer Adam Zachs in Mexico, appeared on the April 14, 2013 Face the State television show with Dennis House on WFSB Channel 3.
“The discovery could force Governor Malloy and state lawmakers to hold another vote on gun control,” House said.
“The legislature simply didn’t follow the procedural process to the t which they are required to do and I found one particular statue they failed to follow. You can’t create one law by breaking another law and, as a result, and, in my opinion, the law, regardless of the fact that it was voted upon and signed, is null and void,” Sach said.
Sachs explained that he researched emergency certification after he worked on another legislative matter in 2012.
While a bill that he advocated at that time was passed through emergency certification, Sachs called the process “odd and offensive to the democratic process”.
The process allows the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House to bring a bill to an immediate vote as opposed to going through the normal committee and public hearing process.
The law, Connecticut General Statue 2-26, has been on the books since 1955 and was designed for dire emergencies such as funding for municipalities that need assistance with snow removal or to treat an epidemic.
While the joint rules of the House and Senate require the writing of an opinion of why the legislation should go directly to the floor, the state statue additionally requires “facts that backs up that opinion”. 
Regarding the new gun control law, Sach said the emergency certification paperwork “contains no such facts, barely contains an opinion.”
Currently, Democrat David E. Williams, Jr., 29th District (Brooklyn, Canterbury, Killingly, Mansfield, Putnam, Scotland, Thompson, and Windham) serves as the President Pro Tempore while Democrat Brendan Sharkey, 88th District (Hamden) serves as the Speaker of the House. 
Sachs admits that emergency certification may have been used as a method of compromise and may have been seen as the only way it could have moved forward in the process. 
“Personally, I don’t see what the emergency was and apparently neither do they,” Sachs said, adding that “they are certainly free to start over and do it the right way.” 
Over the years, Sach said, emergency certification has been used to “pass legislation that doesn’t necessary represent the will of the people and bypasses the democratic process we are supposed to enjoy.”
Sach said that while there are plenty of attorneys in the legislature nobody else seems to have discovered or cared about this issue. 
Now that Sachs has brought the issue up, he believes legislators are “going to have to at least respond to it”.
He questions “how will it play out with the current law, can someone challenge it on this basis, can you even challenge a law that doesn’t technically exist?...in my opinion it’s already null and void....the governor basically signed a blank piece of paper.” 
The interview in its entirety is on YouTube.

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