[420 Girl]

For years, local governments have complained about their legislators at the state and federal level, irate over the fact that those at the Capitol voted to impose mandates on them — well-intentioned mandates but ones that would cost cities and towns money to put into action. Among these are heart and hypertension laws and a requirement that towns pay for the education of every child — no matter what the price — to meet the special needs of individuals.

For the most part, legislators turned a deaf ear, theorizing that the mandates served the greater good. But that was before recession hit.

Fast forward to today, when the state is facing a $900 million deficit this year and close to $8 billion in the next two years. Gov. M. Jodi Rell has challenged members of the General Assembly to “get creative” in finding ways to cut the budget. One answer? State Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, and state Sen. Toni N. Harp, D-New Haven, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, would like to follow the lead of our neighbor to the North, Massachusetts, and change the penalty for possession of an ounce or less of pot to an infraction, rather than an unclassified misdemeanor. The reason? The bill would save law enforcement dollars — a lot of them — and court costs.

A study conducted by Harvard University found Massachusetts spent $30 million annually on police arresting people with the small amounts of marijuana, a figure that didn’t include court and penal system costs, according to The New Haven Register.

This involves a relatively minor risk to society, but a high cost to the criminal justice system, said Harp.

Particularly, Looney added, since anyone charged with a criminal misdemeanor has the right to a public defender.

And that’s just one law.

While the new Press does not support the use or sale of nonmedicinal marijuana, we applaud this approach to lawmaking.

Some new federal laws are required to measure the cost versus the benefit of any proposal, especially environmental proposals.

Shouldn’t the same standard apply to each new measure at the state level? What is the cost (or benefit) to society of, say, adding a deposit to water bottles or other prohibitions that do no harm to another human being.

The fact is, we may find that some laws are worth the cost. And, then again, some aren’t.

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