House GOP Leader talks affordability, tax relief and accountability ahead of 2026 Session

CT Examiner – Wednesday, December 17, 2025
By Robert Storace

With less than two months until the start of the legislative session, House Minority Leader Vince Candelora, R-North Branford, and House Republicans have been busy promoting their agenda via press releases, press conferences and on social media.

And they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

Candelora — a state representative since 2006, consultant for Taconic Wire and the owner of the North Branford-based Connecticut Sportsplex — has spoken forcefully about the GOP’s priorities on everything from electric rates and tax cuts to the state budget.

Candlora told CTExaminer last week that affordability is the key issue for 2026, and that the GOP has the solutions to address it. Ahead of the Feb. 4 start of the legislative session, Candelora said he’s meeting with “different interest groups, doing constituent service and just starting to prepare for the next session.”

CTExaminer: The House and Senate GOP have talked repeatedly about tax cuts for residents. What does that look like, and how do you get there?

Vince Candelora: I think a common theme right now is affordability. One of my concerns is it’s difficult enough to pay your electric bill, to put groceries on the table, everything has become more expensive. But on top of that, we’re seeing property taxes increase as residential properties have appreciated in value. And with the state of Connecticut having record surpluses and more money flowing into our state, we need to start turning to the conversation of how to make Connecticut more affordable for people. And I think our local communities cannot continue to be the primary source of funding education, local education. And so I believe that Connecticut — by offering a property tax credit at a higher level, $1,000 per home — it shifts that burden back to the state to start funding education. I think we do have to look at taking that burden off of local communities.

CTEx: What is your top biggest priority for the 2026 legislative session?

Candelora: I think that [affordability] alone is my biggest priority. When you see parents of school-age children voting down local budgets and voting down their education budget because they just can’t afford to pay more taxes, [and] when we see mortgage payments equal to the tax payments that are needing to be made, Connecticut has a serious problem that we need to get out of.

CTEx: No Republican lawmaker was in favor of the housing bill approved in the special session. What is the top reason GOP lawmakers have been so stridently opposed to the legislation?

Candelora: I think that the bill opens up the housing market to private equity firms. What we are going to see are apartment buildings being built. We aren’t going to see starter homes, and these buildings are going to be predatory. They’re going to come in and build them on commercial properties as of right because that’s what the bill does. And you are going to see not only the character of towns change, but also the congestion and the infrastructure changing. Just in the town of Westbrook, we’re seeing a massive apartment complex being built using a community sewer system, which historically [the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection] has always rejected. We should be looking at places that are more appropriate, like areas that actually have sewers and not go the way of community septic systems. We’ve seen them fail in the past. They’ve been a disaster, but this bill opens up the door to that type of development. So we’re going to see private equity running our housing market the same way private equity started running our hospitals, and we saw how that worked out.

CTEx: Democratic Matt Ritter is seeking a fourth term as House speaker. What are you able to find the most common ground, and what areas are you still miles apart as far as legislation goes?

Candelora: I think our common ground is our philosophy of public service. I think both of us believe that you need to have healthy debate in a chamber. He doesn’t believe that I necessarily have to vote for a bill in order to give input to a bill. So I think that mutual respect for the process has helped improve the legislative process in the sense that it’s not winner-take-all. We always seek to find common ground while maintaining our principles. I think where we differ certainly is overall we are leading two very different caucuses. So going back to that housing bill, it’s something that I think our caucus would push back on. I want to see a more “down, up” approach. And I think probably in the area of the budget, there’s a lot of pressure in his caucus [related to] the safety net and social programs. I think we need to balance that with sustainability and take a deeper look at how do we get people back to work?

CTEx: House Republicans recently issued a statement that criticised the Office of Health Strategy over an audit that found inadequate oversight of millions of dollars in vendor contracts. Are these findings part of a bigger problem within the state government? And, if so, how do you plan on addressing it?

Candelora: I think there’s two problems with those audits. One is the amount of money that we are seeing unaccounted for going out the door. … The second issue is that these audits are ignored, and so some of these deficiencies that we have seen aren’t the first time we’re seeing them in the audit. We created a government accountability committee, and I would like to see that committee meet more often to see them drill down on these audits and actually look at reform. Connecticut does a very poor job of analyzing the results of how it spends money, and we need to bring that accountability back to the government.

CTEx: Regarding removing public benefits from taxpayers’ utility bills — which the GOP has called for — Ritter said the problem would not be solved with one silver bullet, and that it was more complicated than that. Why has removing the public benefits charge been such a rallying cry for House and Senate Republicans?

Candelora: We certainly have challenges on producing generation that will be a long-term solution that we need to aggressively pursue, especially in the area of nuclear [energy], but that public benefits charge really needs to be untangled. There are some charges in the public benefits that probably should stay on the electric bill. But there are many that I believe should be moved to the General Fund and treated like other social programs where the government funds it and there’s transparency brought to that process.

CTEx: What is one piece of legislation — signed into law or not — that you are most proud of during your time as House minority leader?

Candelora: I think time and again that we hear about the bipartisan budget [2017], and so that certainly was a process that I did support, and I stand by it. The 2017 budget, which was done in a very bipartisan way, led to the creation of the fiscal guardrail. I think that was a proud moment for me. The other one that I had worked on was the Fallen Officers Fund [in 2024]. [It] was to actually create a fund to help the families of officers that serve in the line of duty and are killed. That is tragic enough, but to be able to put a program together that helps provide a cushion for these families, whether it be financial or by way of health care benefits, was a program that I was proud to create.

CTEx: Democrats have been united in critiquing the Trump administration on issues ranging from Medicaid and SNAP benefits and immigration. You and many of your colleagues have said Democrats have been blaming Trump for everything when it’s not necessary. Please elaborate on that dynamic and whether the administration has any blame in what the state is currently dealing with.

Candelora: I think there are a lot of moving parts to government, and I think the Connecticut Democrats like to continue to use President [Donald] Trump as their boogeyman because it makes them unaccountable for the one-party rule that they have exercised over this state. I think there are things that Trump has done that have been controversial, but from an economic standpoint, the tariffs have had some [positive] impact on inflation. But we’re still dealing with a lot of the ramifications that have occurred over the last decade, especially coming out of COVID so I think the federal government is something that we have to pivot and react to from a state budget perspective. I still say we need to maintain accountability in state government, and so I have been frustrated to hear Democrats say we need to backfill every program that is being modified or cut at the federal level. And my first comment is we need to first evaluate what programs are worth keeping and what programs we should adopt the federal changes, and there doesn’t seem to be an appetite on the Democrat side to actually do that, that type of evaluation.

CTEx: In October, House and Senate Republicans called for transparency in how Connecticut nonprofits were given funding. What is your specific concern of the process in which nonprofits are funded and how do you hope to change that?

Candelora: I think we have a real problem in the state of Connecticut where you see individual legislators making requests for money, and depending on their seniority and level of influence, are directing money to organizations that might not be worthy of that money. There is no vetting in many situations of the merits of how that money is being spent, and so we just believe there needs to be heightened scrutiny, similar to what’s done at the federal level. People should be disclosing who is requesting the money, and we should be vetting the nonprofit that is receiving that money. There is nothing worse for our nonprofit community to be under a cloak of scrutiny along with our legislature. It’s not good for that industry. There has to be an independent body that could be here to scrutinize some of these very questionable transactions.

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