At a virtual housing forum hosted by Open Communities Alliance (OCA) on October 9, State Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw (D-Avon) acknowledged that the new housing bill being drafted after Gov. Ned Lamont’s veto remains unfinished — and still hidden from public view. Despite that, she continues to press for a special session to pass it before the public has a chance to read it.
Addressing the idea of waiting until the regular session in February, Rep. Kavros DeGraw rejected any delay.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “my Republican colleagues have been making comments to the effect of, well, we should just wait till February. This isn’t an emergency. I think we heard tonight, this was an emergency today. It was an emergency yesterday. It was an emergency five years ago, when rents have gone up 50% in five years in some of our cities. This is an ongoing emergency, and we should be treating it as such.”
Yet the bill she’s defending — H.B. 5002 — offers little that would provide immediate relief. Most of its provisions involve new zoning mandates, long-term planning requirements, pilot programs, and a first-time-homebuyer tax credit that wouldn’t take effect until 2026. It’s a multi-year restructuring of state and local housing policy, not an emergency measure that would lower rents or expand supply anytime soon.
Rep. Kavros DeGraw said she has been pushing for a special session “in July, in August, in September,” and continues to press the governor to call one this fall — even though the legislation is still being drafted. “I don’t currently have the bill,” she admitted. “I believe the majority leader’s team and the governor are still working on the bill.”
When asked when the public might see it, she explained, “There is no secret. But the challenge with all of our legislation is that when we’re working on it, it can change up until the day… we don’t often release the legislation far in advance of special session, because it is still being worked out. There’s language that might be changed. There’s negotiation happening.”
In other words, Connecticut residents — and even some legislators — will likely see the final bill only days before a vote. Rep. Kavros DeGraw noted that the governor’s official call for a special session “usually comes with sort of five days’ notice.” For a measure that could reshape zoning across 169 municipalities, five days is a remarkably short window. Anything less would make public scrutiny nearly impossible.
If lawmakers are still negotiating the contents of a bill as they prepare to vote on it, that’s not leadership — it is poor governance. Rushing unfinished legislation through the Capitol invites confusion, unintended consequences, and loss of public confidence.
Rather than promising to release the text as soon as it is ready, Rep. Kavros DeGraw instead encouraged supporters to “reach out to the governor’s office and share your stories.” She said she personally contacted the governor’s staff during the June debate to ask, “Okay, how many emails are you getting against?” and admitted the response “wasn’t great, because there was so much defense against this bill.”
That remark is telling. Public opposition to the bill was strong, and rather than address those concerns directly, legislators appear focused on organizing a pressure campaign to override them.
Rep. Kavros DeGraw also dismissed concerns about local control, saying, “It’s unfortunate that people are still using words like ‘character of their town or their NIMBYs, not in my backyard,’ but we are going to continue to face that resistance. Some of it is obviously based in racism.”
When Gov. Lamont vetoed H.B. 5002, he cited red flags about state overreach and the risk of imposing housing targets on municipalities. Rep. Kavros DeGraw sees it differently, arguing that the bill’s “Towns Take the Lead” section delivered exactly what the governor had called for.
“It’s interesting that the ‘Towns Take the Lead’ section was such a challenge for the governor because he’s been using that language that we want towns to take the lead over and over again,” she said. “However, that is exactly what the bill did in so many ways, and yet we still ended up with a veto.”
The “Towns Take the Lead” provision was pitched as a compromise between state housing mandates and local control. Instead of imposing a single statewide formula like the earlier “Fair Share” proposal, it would have required each municipality to draft its own housing plan to meet state-defined affordability goals.
Supporters described it as a flexible, bottom-up approach. Critics saw something else entirely. Groups such as CT 169Strong argued that “Towns Take the Lead” was simply a rebrand of “Fair Share”, with the same top-down mechanics hidden under softer language. They warned it would still allow the state to define housing targets, measure compliance, and penalize towns that fell short — effectively turning “local control” into a slogan rather than a safeguard. Those warnings echoed in the governor’s veto message, which cited the bill’s risk of imposing de facto housing quotas and undermining municipal autonomy.
What Could Change
OCA policy director Hugh Bailey, whose group helped draft the original bill, offered a glimpse of what might appear in a revised version. “A lot of this is still up in the air,” he said, but mentioned “some things that might be happening behind the scenes at the Capitol.”
Among them: “an updated housing need assessment,” exempting “the top 20 highest-poverty municipalities,” and a plan where “the number of units would be allocated out to each council of government by the state.” Those regional councils, or COGs, “would be involved in allocating those units out to the municipalities.”
Bailey also said “the new proposal could include the creation of a fund that would be accessible to municipalities that are following the rules,” meaning towns that comply with the mandates “would have access to some funds that would allow them to do things like expand infrastructure and make it more possible for the housing to be built.”
Despite the talk of revisions, Bailey confirmed the underlying structure remains the same: the state sets the housing targets, regional bodies help enforce them, and towns are rewarded for compliance. “This is not a state takeover of local zoning,” he insisted — moments before adding, “leaving it solely up to the towns has not worked” and “we really need state action to take on this crisis.”
In short, the “changes” described appear more cosmetic than structural. The framework remains centralized: state-defined quotas, regional enforcement, and financial incentives for towns that comply.
That makes Rep. Kavros DeGraw’s push for a special session even more concerning. She is calling lawmakers back to Hartford to pass a bill that still lacks final language — one the public has not been allowed to review.
If this issue is truly an “emergency,” the solution should focus on immediate relief: lowering costs, increasing supply, or expanding rental assistance. Instead, the proposal remains a zoning overhaul that would take years to implement.
Connecticut deserves a transparent process, not a rushed vote. Until residents can see and review the legislation for themselves, claims that “there is no secret” ring hollow.
