Democrats lied to the public and their own members, claiming “Fair Share” would be withdrawn.

This past weekend, the Democratic leadership in the Connecticut House of Representatives lied and unabashedly misled the people of the State of Connecticut on poor housing/development policies they were trying to advance. Democrats told the public, and even members of their own party who opposed the bill, that the “Fair Share” Housing bill was dead and that the Fair Share portion would not be part of any bill. Fair Share is an onerous concept which originated in New Jersey that mandates that every town create their “Fair Share” of housing regardless of infrastructure constraints or local zoning regulation or else face costly litigation from outside parties including developers. Majority Leader Rojas said it would no longer be on the table. Then, while the public was sleeping in the dead of night and no one was watching, the forced development “Fair Share” bill magically reappeared, buried in an unrelated bill and then passed by the Democrat majority.

“Optimal, cost-effective housing strategy is only accomplished when thoughtful consideration is given to the unique and hyper-local factors and constraints of each municipality individually. This is reckless policy making that does not address finite land, financial and natural resources, and environmental impacts. Where this forced policy of urbanization has taken effect, housing has not gotten any less expensive, only denser housing,” said CTGOP Chairman Ben Proto, “Speaker Matt Ritter and Majority Leader Jason Rojas should be ashamed of themselves. The people of the State of Connecticut deserve better than what happened this past week. Whether you agree with the legislation or not, we can all agree that our elected representatives should be honest with the people of the State of Connecticut. Not being transparent with the voters is highly disrespectful to the office that these legislators hold, and it does not help our State move forward in a positive way. We should expect and demand more from our representatives. CT Democrats are working in secret to pass an incredibly unpopular mandate that is nothing more than a handout to their hand-picked developers.  These actions of Democrat leadership in Hartford are completely lacking in transparency, and reek of corruption and conflict of interest.”