Sens. Somers, Gordon Blast Democrats for Silencing Hundreds at Vaccine Mandate Hearing

HARTFORD – State Sen. Heather Somers (R-Groton), ranking member of the Public Health Committee, and State Sen. Dr. Jeff Gordon (R-Woodstock), a member of the Public Health Committee, released the following statements sharply criticizing majority Democrat Public Health Committee leaders for ending public testimony at 12:15 a.m. Thursday on highly controversial bills that extend further authority of the state government to set vaccination schedules, as well as rollbacks of religious exemptions.

The bills, H.B. 5044 and S.B. 450, drew hundreds of people to the Capitol and hundreds more online for a public hearing that stretched into the early hours of Thursday morning.

Senator Somers said, “It was the committee Democrats’ decision that there were limitations placed on public comment. Republicans voted ‘no’ on that motion. And now that 12:15 a.m. has come, the Democrats want to reverse course to correct a problem they created, but the hearing had already ended.

“This is what happens when one party has too much power. They disregarded and broke the rules to start the meeting and tried to break them again when met with scrutiny from remaining members of the public waiting to testify,” the lawmakers said.

“Democracy didn’t stop at 12:15, the Republican committee members moved to another room and heard the many other members of the public in an attempt to shine the light through the shadow cast by limited public input.”

Senator Gordon added, “Democrats on the Public Health Committee voted to silence the voices of hundreds of concerned citizens by voting to end testimony arbitrarily after 14 hours at 12:15 AM. Republicans and I voted to spend the time listening to all 550 people who registered to testify.

“This decision is unconstitutional.

“Even more troubling, they had more than 13 hours to reconsider this decision. Republicans pointed that out to them, but instead they chose to try to reverse course at the very last second, not following the established rules, the same rules they used to vote to limit the public hearing time.

“In doing so, they silenced concerned citizens who were physically in Hartford to testify, as well as hundreds more who were waiting online for their turn to speak.

“This is absolutely unacceptable and shameful.

“My Republican colleagues and I, after the public hearing, hosted our own meeting with people still at the Capitol who still wanted to “testify.” It was the right thing to do.”