Section 4-61dd

Citation: Section 4-61dd
Parent Document: Commissioner of Mental Health & Addiction Services v. Saeedi, 143 Conn. App. 839 (2013)
Jurisdiction: Connecticut (state)
Effective Date: 2013-07-09
Original Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/7915192/commissioner-of-mental-health-a... ↗

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Our inquiry, however, does not end with the text of § 4-61dd (b) (3) (A). We also have carefully reviewed the legislative history of § 4-61dd and have discovered no legislative intent that the thirty day filing period act as a jurisdictional bar. In fact, there is no legislative history whatsoever on the subject of the thirty day filing period. The plaintiffs argue that a comment by Representative James A. O’Rourke III, made during the debate on House Bill No. 5487, “An Act Concerning State Employee and Contractor Whistleblowing Complaints”—which ultimately amended § 4-61dd to offer victims of whistle-blower retaliation an administrative process to adjudicate their claims through the commission—indicates that the thirty day filing period was meant to be jurisdictional in nature. Representative O’Rourke stated that “the thought here is to speed up *851the processing of these complaints, to streamline it and have a faster decision.” 45 H.R. Proc., Pt. 9, 2002 Sess., p. 2871. We note first that the plaintiffs’ argument takes this comment out of context. Representative O’Rourke’s comments concerned the creation of the administrative process, not the thirty day filing period. His statement, in whole, reads: “The specific section that you refer to would be [the] alternative process here is, the thought here is to speed up the processing of these complaints . . . .” Id. The discussion on the floor that followed related exclusively to the designation of an alternate forum for pursuing whistle-blower retaliation claims, with no mention of the filing period. Furthermore, even if the comment cited by the plaintiffs offered some indication that the legislature intended the thirty day time limit to “speed up” the process of resolving claims, this does not evince a clear intention by the legislature to create a jurisdictional bar.10

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