Police accountability, ballots among special session topics
A broadening coalition of affordable-housing advocates gathered outside the State Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the time has come to tackle housing segregation in Connecticut. But that time will not be this month.
After meeting with legislative leaders, Gov. Ned Lamont said Tuesday he intends call the legislature into special session to focus on police accountability, the wider use of absentee ballots in November as a temporary COVID-19 safety measure, cost controls on insulin and a continuation of telemedicine begun during the pandemic.
The governor’s public comments confirm what legislative leaders have been saying privately for weeks: the July special session would have a substantive, though narrow agenda. The issue of housing segregation was not raised by legislative leaders, though a second special session in September is under discussion, Lamont said.
Lamont said he intends to issue his formal call for a special session on Friday, the same day the legislature is expected to hold a virtual public hearing on police accountability — the most immediate issue raised by the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.
The House of Representatives is expected to convene on Thursday, July 23. The Senate would take up the bills the following week.
The General Assembly has not met since exiting the Capitol in March as COVID-19 was taking hold on all aspects of political, commercial and social life in Connecticut. The police killing of Floyd rapidly has brought police brutality, racism and the agenda of Black Lives Matter into the mainstream since then.
Housing advocates have been trying to seize the moment, pushing a reluctant legislature to think more broadly about racism than police bias and misconduct. On Tuesday, some housing advocates indicated that they understood their agenda was a long shot for July, but it should get a serious hearing soon, perhaps in September.
“Enough is enough,” said Sara Bronin, the chairwoman of Hartford’s Planning and Zoning Commission, an expert in zoning regulations at UConn Law, and a leader with the coalition Desegregate CT. “We must tackle discrimination and segregation at one of its most insidious sources, and that is our land use system — and specifically zoning.”
Connecticut is one of the most segregated places in the country. With thousands of residents pouring into the streets to protest racism and the police killing of Floyd, this coalition and some progressive Democrats saw an opportunity to change that by overhauling the state’s exclusionary housing laws.
Although the legislature will not attempt meaningful housing reform when it convenes next week, the coalition has landed an unlikely and powerful ally — the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which lobbies on behalf of cities and towns — often in opposition to efforts to affect zoning.
“Our organization for years has really focused on local control, making sure that one size did not fit all, and things that, frankly, were probably a hindrance to some of these efforts,” said Joe DeLong, the organization’s executive director, who spoke during the news conference.
The killing of Floyd helped change that. DeLong said he was asked by officials in one town how CCM could help with police training, but he urged them to be more ambitious.
“I think the first thing that CCM needs to do is reflect on ourselves and understand whether or not we’re being a part of the solution, or we’re just being a quick path to ‘No.’ And that’s why we’re here today. We have members all across the state that have mixed views on this issue,” DeLong said.