Mess

The Connecticut constitution requires a governor to sign all legislation within three days of the adjournment of a legislature. In the last ten years, Connecticut governors have approved bills leisurely, long after the three-day period. Last week the Connecticut supreme court of errors threw the state's legal machinery into serious confusion by invalidating, through a test case, 1,493 laws, large and small, which governors had thus signed unconstitutionally. Jeopardized were the gasoline tax, city charters, banking laws, the amusement tax, public appointments, salaries. One act disqualified was the act increasing the salaries of the judges who voided it.

Governor John H. Trumbull, on his way to Canada, hastened back to Hartford by airplane to "straighten out this mess." As he stepped out of the plane, he asked: "What's the matter? As soon as I get out of the state, you boys start raising hell." Promptly he summoned a special session of the legislature to repass en masse all the legislation voided by the court.