By CT Mirror / Ginny Monk, with additional reporting by Westport Journal

HARTFORD–Even as the Senate gave final passage to a new version of a wide-ranging housing bill Friday, political tensions simmered in Hartford over the two-day special session.

The Senate approved the measure early Friday morning on a 24-10 vote. All four Democrats who voted against a former version switched their votes, and no Republicans voted for the bill. The measure, which the House of Representatives approved on Wednesday, next heads to Lamont’s desk. The governor is expected to sign it.

On Wednesday, the house passed the bill, 90-56, with Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, voting in favor of passage. He’d voted no on HB 5002 earlier this year.

“I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into” making this bill more attractive to Westport. He was hoping he could help craft a bill that “I can vote for.”

“Housing is an urgent issue” in Westport and across the state, Steinberg said. Hartford leaders, including Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and Governor Ned Lamont “deserve credit for making compromises.

“I engaged with both the Majority Leader and the Governor up until the day before the house vote.” 

Steinberg was heartened that HB 8002 will preserve Westport’s ability to “cash in” on their 8-30g moratorium points. “Westport has–for more than a decade–done a good job creating affordable housing.” 

As long as Westport maintains a plan to develop affordable housing, it will retain those moratorium points.

Steinberg said he was also in favor of this bill because of the regional nature of its implementation. 

The Western Connecticut Council of Governments (WestCOG) will be the body that coordinates the regional response to HB 8002. WestCOG is a consortium of Fairfield County municipalities, including Bethel, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Danbury, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, New Fairfield, New Milford, Newtown, Norwalk, Redding, Ridgefield, Sherman, Stamford, Weston, Westport, and Wilton.

Steinberg lauded the work of Francis Pickering, Executive Director WestCOG; Steinberg said he was the right person to be in charge of the implementation of HB 8002.

Representative Dominique Johnson, D-Norwalk, also likes the regional approach this bill promotes. The implementation will “not be as top-down” as past legislation.

Johnson also likes two other aspects of the bill: helping the ”missing middle” and “infrastructure.”

“There are good incentives for the missing middle in this bill,” Johnson said, referring to the provisions for towns with under 50,000 residents that reduce the cost of renting and owning for first-timers and down-sizers.

Johnson likes the fact that capital for infrastructure improvements from Hartford will help towns like Westport, particularly in school construction.

Asked if he thought the path to passage was rushed, Steinberg said, “A special session is not a normal session. Special sessions are convened when there are issues of an urgent nature. Though, in my view, not all of the matters discussed in this session would rise to the level of “urgent,” affordable housing certainly is.”

Housing has long been a politically charged issue in Connecticut and one of the issues that most divides Republicans and Democrats.

Lamont’s veto of House Bill 5002, a sweeping housing bill passed by Democrats during the regular session, damaged his relationship with many lawmakers from his own party. The governor said he wanted to get towns on board, and called for a special session to pass a negotiated version of the bill.

While some said they’re glad to see the finished compromise bill and thankful that the governor stuck with negotiations, for other senators, that relationship remains strained.

House Bill 8002 requires towns to create housing growth plans, changes minimum off-street parking requirements, expands fair rent commissions and incentivizes towns to take steps to allow more housing, among other measures.

“We’re on the verge of passing a major housing bill that will impact the lives of the people of Connecticut in a very positive way,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, noting that other states have passed major housing reform legislation over the past few years. “Our goal is to join with them, understanding this crisis and the nature of this crisis and working to be more proactive and not just reactive.”

Lamont has touted the new housing bill as a compromise. His administration has also put millions in bonding money into building more housing. Lamont pointed to the mayors who ultimately endorsed the revised bill.

“I think we got a pretty good balance. Like I said, ‘Towns take the lead, give these mayors the incentives.’ They stood up, Republicans and Democrats said, ‘We have the incentives we need.’”

But Republicans in the House and Senate objected to both the content of the housing bill and the process — running it in special session, with less time for debate and outside of the normal political process. The bill produced moments of heated debate between the parties over the last two days.

While the rest of the bill saw little or no changes, many of the most substantive pieces around zoning were changed in the compromised version, particularly the portions that drew objections from local leaders. Members of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and Council of Small Towns spoke at a press conference last week in support of the new bill.

The bill requires that towns, either by themselves or with their regional councils of government, create housing growth plans that include a number of units set as a goal to plan and zone for. 

By complying with this section of the law, towns have access to new state money and get increased reimbursement rates for school construction projects. They can also access those benefits by following certain parameters to increase housing density near public transit or by joining the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority to allow more housing in downtowns and near transit.

It also includes parameters to allow conversion of commercial properties to residential without special hearings before planning and zoning commissions, although towns can require that the first floor stay commercial.

It eliminates minimum off-street parking requirements for new apartments of up to 16 units, although towns can require parking assessments and additional parking in two zones of the town not amounting to more than 8% of the land.

And it establishes the Department of Housing as a housing authority that can develop affordable housing on state land and work with towns to build.