Facing filibuster, Democrats stall vote on CT omnibus housing bill
Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror
Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, speaks to reporters on May 22, 2025.
At their regular Thursday morning press briefing, House Democratic leadership appeared confident about passage of the most significant housing legislation to come before the Connecticut legislature in years.
But by Thursday night, the vote on the bill had stalled under threats of a filibuster and a split Democratic party. Lawmakers said an altered version is likely to come up for a vote on Tuesday.
In its latest publicly released draft, House Bill 5002 is an ambitious omnibus measure that tackles zoning, transit-oriented development, parking policy and homelessness. After closed-door negotiations that stretched across most of the day Thursday, it’s not clear what will remain in the bill.
“I try to remind everyone this is somewhat of a normal part of the process in which there are fits, starts, restarts, amendments made, but I think eventually we are going to get there with this housing bill,” said Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, on Thursday evening.
Rojas said he had worked to compromise with Republicans on several key issues and that it came down to not having enough time in the day for the long debate.
Thursday morning, he focused on the compromises already made on the bill. It was the first time in several legislative sessions he had said the progress on Connecticut’s lack of housing wasn’t “painfully incremental.”
“I’m proud of what’s in here,” said Rojas on Thursday morning. “It’s been informed by conversations with a lot of people. I took the time to meet with a number of our Republican colleagues over the course of the session. I’m not suggesting that they’re endorsing the bill, that they’re voting for the bill. It seems unlikely that they will, but I have taken a lot of time to talk to people.”
“His bill is going to be grounded in experience and good public policy, and he probably is as good at that as anybody out of the 187 legislators,” said Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.
Republicans slammed the bill Thursday, saying it would be bad for businesses and communities and contained “major flaws.” They planned to debate it for 10 to 12 hours, Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said. The threat points to the power of the minority party later in the legislative session to talk until time runs out and a bill is dead.
But that opposition was expected.
Less expected among advocates and some members of the General Assembly was the level of pushback from moderates and some urban lawmakers within the Democratic party concerned about changes to parking policy, the conversion of commercial lots to residential and a requirement that every town plan and zone for a set number of units of affordable housing.
“We didn’t expect 100% of Democrats to vote for this bill,” Rojas said. “Their support or lack thereof was not the primary motivation for a delay in the vote.”
Candelora said he expected at least 20 Democrats to vote against the bill Thursday night, which would have left the majority party with a tight but passable margin. Much of the negotiation centered around how long debate would last.
“Large companies like GE and Lego move their headquarters out of our state, being replaced by Amazon warehouse workers,” Candelora said. “It is no longer affordable for those individuals to be able to live here in the state of Connecticut. So we certainly do have an affordability issue. But I think we’ve got to look more broadly at what are the policies that they are passing that are only causing us to have economic loss.”
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, during a hearing on April 9, 2025. Credit: Shahrzad Rasekh / CT Mirror
Some lawmakers also took issue with the way the bill was drafted — as an omnibus bill containing more than a dozen concepts from at least three different committees. It’s a strategic decision typically used to limit debate. The idea is that it’s easier to do one long debate on a big bill rather than several long debates on small bills.
But frustrations about the process rose across both parties in the Capitol on Thursday, people close to the conversations said.
“It’s an insult to everything we do here,” said Rep. Doug Dubitsky, R-Chaplin. Dubitsky planned to introduce several amendments to the bill, he said, which likely would have lengthened debate.
The parking policy changes sparked consternation among Democrats and Republicans on Thursday. The bill would have limited towns’ ability to mandate the minimum number of off-street parking spaces required for certain types of new developments.
As it stands, parking requirements vary widely from town to town. Some spaces are determined by the square footage or seating capacity. It’s also different based on the type of development. For example, In New London, bowling alleys must have three spaces per lane. In Wethersfield, it’s five per lane and one per employee. Meanwhile, in Westport, there must be one space per 180 square feet.
The cost of building parking adds significantly to the cost of housing, and land use advocates have said it means large swaths of downtowns are taken up by parking lots instead of businesses, housing or green space.
But opponents said they feared it would mean people have to walk several blocks from their cars to their homes, that it would dilute local control and didn’t take safety into account.
“I don’t know how else you slice and dice that. You can cook it any way you want, but it’s a mandate, and it’s a grab at local control,” said Planning and Development Committee ranking member Rep. Joe Zullo, R-East Haven.
Members also argued over the details of a bill known as “Towns Take the Lead,” which would consider regional housing supply, need and wealth to determine the number of units of affordable housing that each town would be required to plan and zone for. These plans would have to be included in the 8-30j affordable housing plans that each town submits to the state every five years.
Advocates say that the policy aims to increase affordable housing supply while cutting down on segregation. It’s similar to a “fair share” policy proposed in past legislative sessions.
The conversion of commercial property into “middle housing,” or housing with up to nine units, was also a sticking point. The bill would have required that towns allow that type of conversion without a special hearing before the planning and zoning commission.
Planning and Development Committee co-chair Sen. MD Rahman, D-Manchester, has advocated for this policy since he joined the legislature in 2022, saying it would help address the housing crisis and use up office space that’s been empty since the pandemic.
But opponents said it ignored individual towns’ needs.
“It’s a total upending of zoning,” Candelora said.
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