State Constitution Bars Legislators From Filling Comptroller Vacancy.

Put down your phones. Governor Ned Lamont has had another week of own goals. He will not want to waste time listening to the ambitions of legislators who the Constitution bans from filling the vacancy created by the resignation of State Comptroller Kevin Lembo.

Read Article Third, Section 11. No member of the general assembly shall, during the term for which he is elected, hold or accept any appointive position or office in the judicial or executive department of the state government, or in the courts of the political subdivisions of the state, or in the government of any county. No member of congress, no person holding any office under the authority of the United States and no person holding any office in the judicial or executive department of the state government or in the government of any county shall be a member of the general assembly during his continuance in such office.

State Representative Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford) wants Lamont to select a placeholder, someone who will pledge not to throw her or his full energy into the job with an eye on the 2022 campaign. Scanlon is said, Daily Ructions understand, to have the backing of Senator Chris Murphy. Scanlon, who won a plum job in the hackerama when his Democratic friends appointed him as executive director of Tweed New Haven airport, may want to have a quiet word with Simsbury Democrat Mary Messina Glassman about the limits of Murphy’s patronage.