Some Democratic lawmakers quietly urged Governor Ned Lamont to sign an omnibus housing bill this session — even, in some cases, when they had just voted against it themselves.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Ginny Monk to discuss her article, “Political challenges of CT HB 5002 depicted in Ned Lamont’s texts,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: Hello, Ginny. HB 5002, Connecticut's controversial housing bill, passed by the legislature this year, was quite contentious. However, it appeared Governor Lamont supported the bill until he vetoed it. Is that why you decided to request his text messages for the days leading up to the veto?
GM: That is why I decided to FOI his text messages. His staff had been working on the bill, and it was really a surprise to a lot of lawmakers and a lot of folks who had just been tuned into the housing conversation when he started talking about a veto in June.
WSHU: Were you surprised by what the text messages revealed?
GM: I wouldn't say I was surprised by everything. Certainly, there were some that I didn't expect. You know, I didn't know who the governor was reaching out to for advice on the matter. I was interested to see the way in which his staff discussed the opposition and the kind of open conversation between him and his wife about him running for a third term.
WSHU: So it seemed as if his decision of whether or not to run for a third term had a lot to do with his thinking at the time. As a matter of fact, some of the lawmakers who texted him at that time mentioned the third term and whether this would be good or not. What would they say?
GM: Yeah, so certainly it was part of a conversation. His wife, Annie Lamont, emailed him and said, This is what a third term looks like. Some things are going to be difficult. He was being urged by some local politicians and folks involved in politics in Fairfield County to run for a third term. I will say that the governor's office, in their statement to me, denied that the decision had anything to do with elections or politics, that it was a policy decision.
WSHU: However, Fairfield County towns were vehemently opposed to this bill, and the lawmakers from Fairfield County towns, a lot of them supported the bill but voted against it, while others knew that they had pushback from their constituents but still voted for the bill. Could you just tell us a little bit about how the text messages revealed how different lawmakers ended up where they did on this bill?
GM: Yeah, so I think, you know, you can kind of put them into a few buckets based on the text messages. There were some who were against the bill, voted against it, and said, these are the reasons. There were some who voted against the bill, and then they discussed supporting or texting the governor about how they'd like to see him sign it. And in my conversations with lawmakers, you know, they kind of pointed out there are things that they might believe personally, but it doesn't work for their district politically, or their constituents feel differently. So they don't necessarily vote how they feel. They vote how they think their constituents want to see them vote.
WSHU: The most interesting were the ones who actually voted against the bill and then were lobbying Lamont to sign the bill,
GM: Yeah, it is interesting to see what's behind the scenes there. And you know, a few lawmakers kind of talked about when you might know a bill is going to pass, but you need the political cover. There are all kinds of reasons people vote for and against the bill, and sometimes they're not policy reasons.
WSHU: Now, some of Lamont's strongest supporters were very disappointed, and they felt they had an agreement going into this and that Lamont reneged. How could they trust him going forward? Could you just explain that dynamic a little bit?
GM: Yeah, so I you know, when a bill gets before the governor's office, it is certainly not the first time the governor's office is hearing about the bill. In the case of 5002, there were staff from the governor's office, including his chief of staff, who were working with lawmakers, negotiating with them. And you know, even in the final days of the session, I asked his spokesperson, Rob Blanchard, whether the governor planned to sign, and he said yes. So I think you can conclude from all of those things that the governor did have a deal with lawmakers. And then in his post-session press conference, he wavered a little bit in his support. He said he wished he had seen the bill earlier, which I think a lot of lawmakers were really surprised to hear in their minds. You know, his staff and his office have been very involved.
WSHU: We have a special session coming up, and this is the main issue that they'll be dealing with. Is there a way to salvage the situation, and how do you think it's going to play out in a special session? Because there were certain issues. For instance, Lamont is concerned that he says the local communities should lead the way. I don't know what that really means, but then there's an issue with parking, reducing the number of parking spaces for multi-family housing. So could you just talk about that and what you think will happen in this special session?
GM: Yeah, so you're kind of there on the two issues that Lamont has said he's concerned about. One was a measure that divided up the housing need amongst the towns in the state, which told them they needed to plan and zone for this number of units, so we would assign them a number of units. The other was to remove off-street minimum parking requirements for some smaller apartment buildings, with the idea being that it makes it easier to build more housing cheaply, and you can fit it in more places. So those were really the two big issues that towns had, and Lamont said he wanted to work on them. It sounds like he had some sort of compromise. I don't know what that will look like with those two measures, whether it'll mean they're watered down, cut out, or if there's some easy technical language changes that would make the governor happy. But yeah, it sounds like we're looking at a special session sometime next month.
WSHU: And bottom line, Connecticut has a housing crisis. Do you think that at the end of the day, we're going to make progress in trying to deal with our housing crisis?
GM: It's interesting that you use the word progress. That's something that House Majority Leader Jason Rojas has talked about a lot: how past bills have sort of been painfully incremental. Process is the phrase he uses. And I think the big question is, 5002, I think, didn't feel so incremental. It felt big. And will this new bill be just painfully incremental again.
WSHU: Wow. Well, thank you so much. Ginny. Really appreciate you doing this, and great to get a behind-the-scenes look at what the political negotiations are on these bills.
