Tuesday’s candidate debate, hosted by the League of Women Voters Greenwich, featured candidates in the Nov 5,2024 election for State Representative in the 149th, 150th and 151st districts.
First came the debate between State Senate candidates in the 36th district.
Questions for the State Rep candidates touched on the state’s role in creating affordable housing, tax policy and public transportation.
On affordable housing, Republican Tina Courpas, who is challenging incumbent Democrat Rachel Khanna, said the state’s role in affordable housing should be scaled back since environment and infrastructure are not considered by state mandates.
She accused incumbent Khanna of betraying promises to fight for local control by voting for “Work Live Ride,” a transit oriented development bill.
Ms Khanna, who was endorsed by Connecticut Realtors, said she was steadfast in advocating for local control.
“I don’t want the state to tell us where and how to build housing,” she said.
She said she broke with her party and voted against the 2023 Fair Share bill that would have required each community to build a number of units mandated by the state.
In 2024, when it looked like the “Work Live Ride” bill would pass, she and the House delegation crafted language to protect local control.
She voted for 5474 that would have allowed Greenwich to get more points toward an 8-30g moratorium.
“When my opponent accuses me of violating my promise, I respectfully respond that I did the exact opposite,” Khanna said.
Paul Cappiali, the Republican challenger to incumbent Democrat Steve Meskers in the 150th district, said despite the Democrats work to “add constructive points” to the Work Live Ride bill, they should not have voted for it.
He said Hartford had a role to play in affordable housing, and he would like more firefighters and police officers to be able to live in Greenwich.
However, he said, “Greenwich can’t afford that growth and there are other towns that can.”
Mr. Meskers said he was offended to be accused of voting for a bill that limited local control.
“There was an opt-in provision that allowed us to do what we chose and wanted to do, in consultation with planning & zoning. I’ve always supported local control. I’m not in favor of high rises. I was born in the Bronx and lived in Brooklyn before I moved to Greenwich. If I wanted high rises I would have stayed in Brooklyn.”
“I don’t understand how this accusation can be made,” Meskers said. “It bothers me that people can make that accusation and then hope to have a bi-partisan relationship.”
Tod Laudonia, the Republican challenging Democratic incumbent Hector Arzeno in the 151st district, said the state had no business being involved in making determinations about the cost of real estate.
He said his family had property passed down from grandparents who built their homes themselves, and bureaucrats in Hartford should not be involved in decisions about what is affordable.
“The word affordable is a subjective term,” he said. “And as far as workforce housing, the private schools – Brunswick and GCDS – have done things to help their workers, teachers and administrators, giving them places to live.”
Laudonia said many public sector employees don’t want to live in the town where they work anyway.
Mr. Arzeno said there was a time when 75% of Greenwich police officers lived in Greenwich, but now very few can afford to.
Arzeno said he had a different view about the desire to live in Greenwich, noting his own adult children do live in town.
Tax Policy Priorities
On tax policy, Cappiali said he would target government spending.
“We need to be more aggressive with our unions and find opportunities to get ride of wasteful spending,” he said, adding that the public benefits charge in recent Eversource electric bills amounted to an additional tax and wasteful spending.
Meskers said there were two short term ways to lower taxes. He said the convenience tax, which refers to “the convenience of the employer,’ means residents of Greenwich pay New York state tax and are exempt from paying Connecticut tax.
“The issue is to renegotiate with the state approximately $456 million of earned income taxed in New York state, because the negotiated contract between NY and Connecticut allowed that privilege,” he said. “It’s going to take a Supreme Court decision, and I’m urging the Governor and staff to clarify the legitimacy of the convenience tax so we can recapture that revenue.”
Second, he said following fiscal guardrails deal in the past 6 years, tax revenue had been used to build up a rainy day fund, and funds in excess of that had gone to paying for past spending and unfunded liabilities.
“That’s part of the process of getting our fiscal house in order,” he said, adding that there had been a historic tax in Connecticut cut last year.
Also he said pension and retirement income are now tax exempt. Specifically the first $75,000 of pension income for a single person and $125,000 for a married couple.
“The state has been on a fiscal diet over the past couple years, reducing the workforce and expenditures. We continue to pay down unfunded liabilities – we have teachers and state workers who have worked for 30 or 40 years in this state and those pensions, due to bad decisions in the 70s and 80s, were never funded.”
Laudonia said “revenue” was a euphemism for taxes. “The state is not there to make money,” he said.
He agreed the unfunded liabilities need to be addressed, but, he said, “We have a spending problem…We need to stop spending needlessly.”
Arzeno said the work to bring fiscal stability to the state was bipartisan, and today Connecticut has a AAA rating and was considered an investment grade state, which brought down the cost of public debt.
“We’d like to see less taxes, and this is why we have to grow our economy,” he said. “This is what we are doing.”
Ms Courpas said Connecticut had overspent for decades resulting in unbalanced budgets, until 2017 when “fiscal guardrails” – spending cap, volatility cap and revenue cap – were implemented.
“It worked,” she said. “With all due respect, Steve, in 2024, a vote came up on whether the guardrails would be adhered to. My opponent voted to overspend $700 million of Covid relief money to plug holes in the budget. That is not fiscal discipline. It concerns me that just as (fiscal guardrails) were starting to work, there was a footfault.”
And, she warned, “We are close to reaching being a one-state party…Democrats could control 70% of the legislature if three seats flip in the House. This means radical things the majority party wants, that people don’t like, will have little to no opposition, even from a moderate governor like Ned Lamont.”
She said the public benefits charge on electric bills was a hidden tax, and Covid relief funds should have been used to prevent that charge being added to customer bills.
She warned that a statewide property tax, a statewide capital gains surcharge and mansion tax were in the works.
Ms Khanna said while Greenwich contributes “mightily” to the state in taxes, last year the largest tax cut in the state’s history was passed and expanded exemptions for pension income.
“Importantly, having a seat at the table with the majority helped us secure a lot of money foe the district and bring back a lot of our tax payer funds back for projects,” she said.
“We have worked strongly as a delegation to leverage more funds for critical projects in town, such as the reconstruction of Central Middle School, the Glenville corridor project, and the elevators at Greenwich Library,” she said. “Overall our fiscal health is the best it’s been in decades.”
Khanna said the state paid down its pension debt by $8 billion which she said would save taxpayers about $700 million a year.
“Our rainy day fund is fully funded at $4 billion. And several credit ratings agencies had upgraded Connecticut’s debt ratings.”
“The stabilization bill did not bypass the guardrails,” she said.
She referred to ‘use it or lose it’ federal ARPA money that was used to fund projects in Greenwich including elevator repairs at Greenwich library, roof repairs at Parsonage Cottage, Barbara’s House, River House, the Greenwich United Way and many more.
Mr. Cappiali described comments on taxes from incumbents as mind boggling.
“We have to be wary of a super majority in Hartford. I think some of these people re living in la la land,” he said. “We need checks and balances.”
Meskers quipped, “I don’t think anyone other than my daughter has ever accused me of living in la la land.”
“We stepped up to the plate to bring resources back to this town,” he said. “We’re trying to improve the quality of life for this town. That means we’re trying to take care of our children, our seniors and our road beds.
“When I look at public policy here, I see an attempt to privatize the town-owned nursing home and an attempt to shrink the budget for the school district by pushing the school district out of a public building and into a rental unit,” Meskers added.
Laudonia said Greenwich should send less money to the state and fund projects itself.
Khanna said Republicans seemed to be concerned about an “imagined” super majority in Hartford, but ignored the Republican super majority in Greenwich.
“This argument assumes that all Democrats vote the same way, but in the House there are both progressive and moderate Democrats,” she said.
“I am quite capable of breaking with my party,” Khanna said. “The advantage of being part of a majority is we have a seat at the table and we get stuff done.”
Arzeno said in the past, while Greenwich sent a lot of money to Hartford, the town “got nothing back.”
“On the BET, it seems our own people were working against us,” Arzeno said. “We missed the deadline to have CMS in the project priority list. We had to work day and night to have that project back on the priority list.”
Left to right: Tina Courpas, Rachel Khanna, Paul Cappiali, Steve Meskers, Tod Laudonia and Hector Arzeno. Oct 15, 2024 Photo: Leslie Yager
Public Transportation, Bike and Pedestrian Safety
There was an array of responses to a question about encouraging bus ridership and making it safer for residents to bike and walk.
State Rep Khanna, who is a triathlete, said she had partnered with the CT DOT and Greenwich DPW to bring money home for key pedestrian and traffic safety projects including the Glenville traffic project.
“We also recently received an $800,000 Community Connectivity Grant for pedestrian and traffic improvements from the state for Railroad Avenue,” she said. “I voted in favor of adopting the recommendations of the Vision Zero Council and to allow municipalities to adopt red light cameras, as well as address wrong-way driving.”
Ms Courpas said transit infrastructure was under funded by the state.
“Nowhere is this more stark than in the case of Metro-North,” she said, adding that last year the Lamont administration announced a $315 million investment in 60 state-of-the-art rail cars in central Connecticut for an under-utilized line, rather than the heavily-commuted New Haven line.
“Why are legislators from New London and Danbury out-advocating legislators from Greenwich?” she asked.
She said without project labor agreements, property values, jobs, revenue base, and quality of life would increase, and rails could be upgraded and commutes reduced from 60 minutes to 30 minutes.
Courpas described 8-30g as the elephant in the room.
“We cannot be talking about safety and bike lanes when we are looking at the unbridled hand of the state coming into our towns and cities and bypassing concerns about these issues.”
Meskers said because local control was critical, it was important to have a seat at the table.
To encourage people and small businesses to move to Connecticut, Meskers said it was important to focus on quality of life issues and the infrastructure people move to Greenwich for.
“That is good schools, supporting our aging, traffic safety and pedestrian safety,” he said. “We have forcefully worked for that. This past session I was made co-chair of the Commerce Committee. In that role we created a small harbor fund. What’s the value of that? To make those harbors safe and commercially viable to grow the economy of the state.”
Meskers talked about developing the tourism industry in the Mystic area to compete with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who spend many more millions than Connecticut on tourism.
In the last electoral cycle, Meskers said promises were made, and a bicycle group strongly advocated for bike paths.
“I’ve not heard about one kilometer of commitment to bicycle paths. Until we have commitments at the local level for bicycle paths, it’s going to be hard for me to walk up to Hartford and secure funding from them. I need to see plans and execute the plans. This is what we did for Central Middle School.”
“To hear about bike paths when we’re in the middle of this infrastructure crisis is crazy,” Cappiali said.
He said Meskers’ work to improve tourism in the Mystic area was “crazy,” and that the Connecticut state affordable housing statute 8-30g would potentially lead to an influx of people to town.
As for Laudonia,he said, “Buses are a thing of the past. “This is the USA and you’re free to make your own decision about how to get from point A to point B.”
“Our roads, originally most of them were horse paths – not that wide,” Laudonia continued. “Putting 20 people on a bus is not going to solve our congestion problems….the next step is eminent domain to make the streets wider for bike paths and bus lanes. That’s invasive government.”
Meskers addressed the comment about tourism in Mystic, saying it was important to improve economic prospects of the entire state.
“So that we aren’t the only place that get taxed,” he said.
See also:
36th District State Senate Candidates Spar on Gun Safety, Abortion, Cost of Living, Taxes