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Donovan Says Special Session Will Deal With Jobs and Minimum Wage Bills

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Two high-priority pieces of legislation didn't make it out of the capitol this session: One was a jobs bill, the other raised the minimum hourly wage by a quarter. But as WNPR's Jeff Cohen reports, House Speaker Chris Donovan says he expects both to be on the table at an upcoming special session.

There's been a lot of debate about why the bills failed. The minimum wage bill was Donovan's favorite; the jobs bill was at the top of the list of Senate President Don Williams. Both men are Democrats, both lead their respective legislative chambers, but neither passed the other one's bill.

Williams has said the minimum wage bill didn't have the votes in the senate, while Donovan critics have said that the speaker didn't bring up the jobs bill in retaliation.

Appearing on WNPR's Where We Live, Donovan said he and Williams spoke recently about the measures.

"I talked to Don. We plan to bring them up in special session."

Donovan, who is running for congress, told host John Dankosky that timing isn't all that important.

Donovan: Whether it happened by the end of the session day or whether it will happen in another week or two, I don't think that's really the issue. The issue is we both care about jobs and I support the jobs bill, and the other is that I think it's important to keep talking about the minimum wage. There's 106,000 people out there that are looking at the general assembly and saying, you know, do you respect us enough to give us an quarter an hour?

Dankosky: But if you can't get the votes for that, would you still make sure that this jobs bill gets through in this special session?

Donovan: Yeah, I support that. Absolutely.

A date for the special session has not yet been set.

For WNPR, I'm Jeff Cohen.

You can listen to the entire interview with Chris Donovan on Where We Live tonight at 7 p.m.

Jeff Cohen started in newspapers in 2001 and joined Connecticut Public in 2010, where he worked as a reporter and fill-in host. In 2017, he was named news director. Then, in 2022, he became a senior enterprise reporter.

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