CT legislature preps for special session. With more on the table than usual, some possible surprises

Hartford Courant – Thursday, September 4, 2025
By Christopher Keating

Returning from their summer break, the Connecticut legislature is preparing for a likely special session in October to address the state’s affordable housing problems and plug potential holes from federal budget cuts.

Lawmakers are anticipating a broader-than-normal session on multiple topics, as opposed to past special sessions that were narrowly tailored to avoid reopening a wide agenda that would include extraneous topics.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Hartford Democrat, said the session would include bipartisan bills that had passed the state House of Representatives by wide margins in the last session but never received votes in the Senate.

Those include a major education bill with 30 sections and a children’s mental health bill to increase psychiatric services that had been a high priority for some lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.

Rep. Tammy Exum, a West Hartford Democrat who co-sponsored the mental health bill, described it as a historic and “transformative piece of legislation that responds directly to the youth mental health crisis, which has been exacerbated by the impacts of the pandemic, presenting itself in the form of increased rates of depression, suicide, and self-harm among adolescents.”

The bills, Ritter said in an interview, were derailed by Republican filibusters in the final days of the session, and he is making sure that they come back up for a vote because of bipartisan support in the House.

In addition, multiple legislative committees will be holding hearings in the coming weeks on a variety of topics as lawmakers decide whether to move forward with legislation. The judiciary committee, for example, will help decide whether the legislature will again move to strengthen the Trust Act, a controversial law that limits law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration agents.

Lawmakers will determine, for example, whether to take any action to block ICE from making arrests inside state courthouses, which are under the purview of the state government.

“We can’t control what happens outside the courthouse,” Ritter said, adding that the legislature also does not have jurisdiction over federal courthouses.

Lawmakers will also determine how much money to set aside in a “federal response fund” that could be an estimated $600 million to $700 million to prepare in advance for expected cuts by the Trump administration.

Affordable housing
Lawmakers are still hoping to approve legislation to make housing more affordable after Gov. Ned Lamont vetoed a bill in June. The veto was deemed a setback by most Democrats and considered the right move by Republicans because they said the measure would take away too much control from local zoning officials.

But House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said that the Democrats who control both chambers of the state legislature have not reached out during the summer months.

The Democrats had enough votes in each chamber to pass the controversial bill, and some lawmakers were surprised by Lamont’s veto.

“The housing bill — we’re not getting very far,” Candelora told The Courant in an interview Wednesday. “People are still choosing to stay in their camps and not try to work together on a compromise that our towns and cities could support. … I would say Republicans are where they were when the session ended. It didn’t get a single vote during the session, and it won’t get a single vote today based on where it is.”

The state’s mayors and first selectmen played a key role in Lamont’s veto and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the Council of Small Towns both publicly opposed House Bill 5002.

Candelora said the legislature should not move forward unless there is more consensus.

“In order to accomplish affordable housing goals, everyone has to have buy-in,” Candelora said. “Going into special session to pass a bill that’s going to get vetoed again doesn’t make any sense.”

Asked by The Courant about the progress over the summer on housing, Lamont said, “There’s been a lot of back and forth. As you know, I’m a big believer in the towns take the lead. I want them to have incentives to take the lead. I want them to show us where they want the housing to go. We do have a real housing need in this state and in this country.”

Lamont added, “I was interested to see [Treasury] Secretary Bessent say that the president may call a national housing emergency because of the nature of what’s happening: not enough housing, affordability, and homelessness is impacting 49 other states as well.”

Connecticut has had high housing prices for decades, but officials said the problem has become particularly acute for young homebuyers as prices have skyrocketed since the coronavirus pandemic.

With inventories low, prices have jumped up exponentially as buyers have scrambled for condominiums and homes after they have been out-bid by more well-heeled buyers. The bidding has prompted buyers to pay above the asking price for Greenwich mansions to New Haven condominiums to Greater Hartford homes.

In Simsbury, a five-bedroom home with a three-car garage sold in April 2024 for nearly $800,000, which was $170,000 over the asking price. The homeowner received 27 offers, including many that were above the asking price, and the house was sold within one week to the highest bidder.

The most controversial parts of the vetoed bill concerned parking, zoning, “fair share” housing, and converting commercial properties into residential, among others. The bill called for eliminating mandatory minimum parking requirements in developments with 24 units or less in order to make it easier to build more housing. That spurred opposition from those who say a lack of parking is already a major problem in many communities.

A fiscally moderate Democrat, Lamont has butted heads with liberals in his own party in the past, but liberals do not have enough votes to override Lamont’s vetoes. The state House of Representatives has 102 Democrats, and the number necessary for a veto override is 101. With the housing bill, for example, 18 House Democrats voted against the legislation, blocking any chances for a veto override.

Trust Act

As raids have increased across the country, the state legislature will be analyzing the Trust Act that sets parameters dealing with federal law enforcement officials.

“Look, I’m willing to hear what people’s concerns are, but obviously we strengthened the Trust Act just in this last session,” Lamont told reporters Tuesday at an unrelated event in Wallingford. “The federal government does immigration. We do law and order. Let’s do what we do, and let them do what they do. That’s sort of the heart and soul of what the Trust Act is all about.”

Lamont added, “If immigrants don’t feel comfortable going to school or going to the hospital or going to a courthouse or talking to a police officer, they are less safe and our communities are less safe.”

Based on the law, Lamont said his powers are limited in some cases.

“Remember, the feds do immigration,” Lamont said. “There’s not a lot I can do if ICE wants to come into a community. What I can do is say I don’t ask everybody’s immigration status, so we can’t participate. That’s not what we do. Our job is to keep criminals off the street.”

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