According to this story, the Connecticut House Government Administration & Elections Committee is not likely to pass HB 5528, a bill to revamp the state’s public funding program.

The existing law provides for extra public funding for certain publicly-funded candidates. The existing law gives extra public funding when opponents spend a great deal of privately-raised money. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Arizona Free Enterprise PAC case that such extra public funding is unconstitutional. In response, HB 5528, a proposal by Governor Dan Malloy, eliminates the extra public funding, but says contribution limits for publicly-funded candidates would be relaxed.

The problem with that idea is that it seems to run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Davis v FEC, which ruled that a federal law, relaxing contribution limits for congressional candidates who have opponents who spend more than $350,000 of their own money on their own campaign, is unconstitutional. The Committee heard testimony that the Governor’s proposal wouldn’t be constitutional, and probably won’t pass the bill in its existing form.