Yesterday, Gov. Ned Lamont and his progressive challenger for Governor, State Senator Josh Elliot (D-Hamden), answered questions on the subjects of housing, energy and transit. The questions were posed by Peter Harrison, Connecticut’s Director of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), a public policy research institute focused on the tri-state area. Pro-Homes CT, formerly known as Desegregate CT, is a subsidiary of RPA.

“Our goal in this series is to raise the issues that we believe are critical to delivering a better Connecticut today and in the long term, to help the voting public understand how you think about these issues, and to start what we hope will be a conversation through this election cycle into the next four years and beyond,” said Harrison.

Housing

The conversation on housing started with HB 8002, the omnibus housing bill passed in special session last November. Last December, Harrison told Inside Investigator the bill was “pretty good,” but believed it to include more compromises than housing reform advocates would have liked. Last June, the General Assembly passed HB 5002, a more ambitious housing omnibus bill, but Lamont vetoed it in the face of strong municipal opposition. 

“I’ll tell you why it was really important to me how we made adjustments from the first bill,” said Lamont. “This bill had buy-in from mayors and first selectmen. We’re giving them incentives to do the right thing.” 

Lamont reaffirmed his belief that regional Councils of Government (COGs) will be instrumental in ensuring continued housing growth by fostering greater cooperation between municipalities.

“We’re making the COGs more effective and more efficient,” said Lamont. “I think it’s probably the best way to go and most effective way to go. I can’t just sit around mandating things, but I got to bring people along with us for our future.”

Elliott criticized Lamont’s veto of HB 5002, and questioned his familiarity with the finer details of the bill, pointing to a press conference Lamont held after his veto.

“During the press conference, it was clear he didn’t know what was in it, always asking his staff,” said Elliott. “I think whoever we hire for this position has to have a very strong perspective on what we want to see for policy.”

Elliott praised HB 8002 for keeping 5002’s transit-oriented development policies, but criticized changes to its minimum parking requirements and the lack of enforcement measures to ensure municipalities reach their housing goals. He agreed that the COGs’ expertise could be useful, but believes leaning on them to the extent 8002 ultimately prescribes is “a very moderate move to ensuring that more building happens.” Elliott argued that the state shouldn’t be afraid to wield its power against municipalities that remain recalcitrant in the face of the state’s housing crisis.

“Ultimately we have to bring center and center left town administrators in, because they were a large part of why the bill originally failed, 5002, but we also can’t just be asking for permission over and over and over again, because we really are just going to be back to where we were 10–15 years ago, and we need to be moving,” said Elliott.

Elliott said the state needs to be more proactive in achieving housing growth, and believes his propensity for greater action is what sets him apart from Lamont, calling himself a “reformer” and Lamont a “status-quo manager.”

“We do need to be building and we do need to be working on the supply issue and we can’t just allow status quo to take hold, because people are struggling to be here,” said Elliott. “Inertia is what we’re trying to get over.”

Both Lamont and Elliott spoke in favor of making changes to zoning and building laws that slow housing growth. Lamont leaned in on the changes already made by 8002, such as its allowance for “as-of-right” permits for housing in commercial districts and transit districts, as well as its reduction in minimum parking lot requirements. He also said he would support any future efforts to simplify building codes in a way that doesn’t compromise safety.

“Those are changes we have already implemented and they are going forward right now, but we’ll work with you [RPA] to see what other changes should be made,” said Lamont.

Elliott is in favor of eliminating minimum parking requirements entirely, and also proposed the lowering of minimum lot sizes required for housing developments, expanding the legality of accessory dwelling units (secondary dwellings located on larger housing lots), and making the reconversion of offices into housing easier. He also supported the downsizing of minimum size requirements for spaces like elevators and stairways in state building codes in an effort to make development easier. 

Both Lamont and Elliott also stressed the need for the state to ensure there is more affordable housing growth specifically, with Lamont calling it an issue he intends to “double down on” if given another term. Elliott also floated the idea of potentially “having more publicly owned subsidized housing,” and believes that the state should take a greater role in “backfilling” reduced federal funding to housing developments in exchange for the greater regulatory burden placed upon them over the years.

Energy

Harrison asked both candidates what their “ideal” mix of energy sources would be. Lamont highlighted the state’s continued reliance on nuclear power, and said he tends “to believe that nuclear power is going to be a big piece of New England’s future.” He said he is currently discussing the future of Millstone with Dominion Energy, and in doing so, discovered hesitance among nuclear developers to use newer, more efficient nuclear reactors in Connecticut because of insufficient state regulation.

“You may say, ‘Boy that’s a little counterintuitive,’ but what they’re tell us is, ‘Look, I like going into a regulated market like Georgia or Virginia, where all the cost overruns are borne by the ratepayers, not in Connecticut [where] they’d be borne by the shareholders,” said Lamont. “So those are the types of things we have to navigate as we try and get more carbon-free power into our state.”

Lamont also believed “solar and efficiency” to be “so important” to bridging the gap between long-term renewable energy goals and short-term rate relief. 

“We have the energy efficiency fund, so I’m able to go out and tell a middle-class homeowner in Willimantic, they’ve got a house that was built in the 1970s, [that] we can come in, we can reduce your electric prices by, you know, $100-$200 a month,” said Lamont. “I got to show, Pete, that this is real for people every day, to make sure I’m not just asking them to sacrifice, but I can make a difference in their lives and keep your environmental aspirations.”

Elliott said that climate change represents a “five-alarm fire,” and that if he were governor, “we’d be doing everything we can immediately to be investing dramatically in renewable energy, whether it’s solar or wind, or geothermal or tidal.”

Elliott also called himself “unnecessarily supportive of nuclear to get us from Point A to Point B.” He criticized Lamont for pulling out of Vineyard Wind 2, a proposed three-state procurement deal for wind energy, and continuing to invest in natural gas. While Elliott acknowledged that renewables come with “an incredible upfront cost,” he argued that its long term cost efficiency makes up for it. 

“It just means you have to make these investments now,” said Elliott.

Elliott proposed radical changes to reduce the cost of renewable energy procurement, such as dramatic changes to the state’s tax structures.

“Got to fix the tax structure, it’s that simple,” said Elliott. “For the ultra wealthy, slightly more of a tax ends up being a number on a screen. For people that are in the middle class, it is your actual day-to-day life and your ability to survive in the state. That is the underlying friction, is that it is cost now versus a livable Earth later.”

He also believes the state should consider the possibility of transitioning to a state-owned utility grid. Elliott said that in the six Connecticut municipalities that deliver public energy, the costs are 30-40% cheaper, “because there’s no profit.” He wanted “everyone to know that this is a hard thing to do,” but said the state can “learn the lessons from the places where it’s worked and learn the lessons from the places where it hasn’t.”

“When we are the most expensive state in the country for energy, that is going towards private shareholders, and we can resolve this problem by allowing municipalities the option of purchasing their grid at a fair value,” said Elliott. “It won’t work if they just take up the rates, and then we have to spend all this money to pay it down, that doesn’t make it cheaper. That just is a massive giveaway to these private companies.”

Transit

On the topic of transit, both Lamont and Elliott agreed the state has significant room for improvement, differing most in their opinions on how those improvements should be paid for.

Lamont said he’s focused on transitioning the state to “more frequent, faster, modern rail.” He also highlighted his administration’s decision to make bus fare free during COVID, and its continued elimination of fares for veterans and lower fares for students. Lamont also said that Garrett Ecualitto, the State’s Transportation Commissioner, is currently working to get buses “better coordinated.”

Harrison asked Lamont how much progress he feels his administration has made in achieving his “30/30/30” promise. In 2019, Lamont pledged to make transit between New Haven and Stamford and between New Haven and Hartford take 30 minutes.

“I think we’re making, actually, pretty good progress,” said Lamont. 

Lamont acknowledged that it is an “eight year plan,” but said his administration has worked to achieve the goal by straightening out rail lines, purchasing new rail cars, improving bridges and rail lines across the state, and increasing the frequency of trains.

“So those are the priorities we’ve got right now,” said Lamont. “I think it’s working.”

Elliott said if he were governor, his goals would be to ensure “reliable and affordable fares” for trains and to prioritize environmentally sound rail improvements. He also wants to increase connectivity to Boston, and “make sure there are more stops,” and “more lines so that if you do need to get somewhere quicker, there is a way you can get to a place quicker with less stops.” He also said he would “love more hubs.”

He also believes state decision-makers should treat transit as a public service instead of a business. 

“For some reason, we’ve got into our heads that these services have to break even or make money, which doesn’t make any sense,” said Elliott. “This is a government service, and if we are going to get people on board, we need not weeks or months of reliability and affordability, we need years of reliability and affordability.”

Elliott said the state needs “somebody who’s willing to make that investment up front, and then stick with it,” acknowledging it will take time “to build trust with the public.” 

“There’s so many reasons we should be investing in our public infrastructure, and I think buses are those specifically where, people who need that help the most, is where we should be starting,” said Elliott.

When asked about the future of the state’s Special Transportation Fund (STF), Lamont said the state will have “to look at our alternatives and see what the lay of the land is.” Lamont said when he came into office, “there was nothing in there,” and highlighted that through the diversion of a portion of the state’s sales tax and the creation of a highway user fee, the state has been “able to pay down some of our debt.”

“We’re in a pretty good solvent position now,” said Lamont.  

Elliott suggested the state transition off its reliance on the gas tax, which he called “an unreliable long-term source revenue,” to fund the STF. Elliott thought Lamont had the right idea when he suggested the creation of tolls back in 2019, and believed its failure was due to his inability to message effectively to the public.

“I am pro tolls,” said Elliott. “What I think it needed was a better messenger, because the fact is that we are going to have to find revenue for this.”

Elliott acknowledged that tolls are “regressive,” and said he doesn’t think they’re “the end all be all” solution to the problem. He proposed a user fee which would more heavily tax truckers and commuters, and also believed the issue could be further solved by a more progressive tax structure in general.

“If we want to implement something like tolls to make sure that the STF doesn’t go bankrupt, it doesn’t go empty, it’s going to have to be continually offset by a better tax, and so this is part of an overall tax structure that I’ll be talking about,” said Elliott.

Harrison said the RPA will be holding an additional forum with Senator Ryan Fazio (R-Greenwich), the Republican candidate for governor, on July 9.

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