Looney Challengers Eye Housing, Vouchers

This week, two New Haveners stood outside of buildings in varying stages of construction or decay that they said symbolize the problems the state faces — and the problems that they are running for the State Senate to fix.

A backhoe whirred in the background as Alex Taubes stood next to the wood and concrete skeleton of the next addition to Mill River Crossing, the rebuilt mixed-income public-housing development (nee Farnam Courts) where he lives.

The construction going on behind him is a start, Taubes said. But it’s just a drop of cement in the state’s public housing bucket that Tabues said needs 200,000 more units in the next five years.

There was no construction happening on the old Winchester Repeating Arms factory on Winchester Avenue as Jameson White stood next to it — neither on the decaying section with boarded windows nor on the section that has been converted to high-end ​“Winchester Lofts” apartments.

Jameson acknowledged that the apartments that replaced the brick hulk’s empty rooms do add to New Haven’s tax rolls, but he was not there to talk about housing. Rather, to him, the building symbolized the manufacturing jobs that he said have been squeezed out of the state by over-regulation.

Taubes and White are both running for the 11th State Senate District seat, which represents half of New Haven and a swath of Hamden.

Taubes, a civil rights lawyer, tried to challenge incumbent Martin Looney to a Democratic Primary, but did not garner enough votes at the party’s convention to make it onto the ballot. He is running as a petitioning candidate without the backing of a party. White, a salesman for a Florida-based battery company, is a Republican.

Both candidates used the buildings in the city’s changing infrastructure to make very different points about what the state needs. While Taubes would like the state to embark on a massive housing construction program, White would like the state to step back, deregulating business and finding ways to spend less.

The two challengers are taking on one of the most prominent and longest-serving members of the Senate. Looney has served in the State Senate since 1993, and served in the state House for 12 years before that. (Click here to read a previous article about the race.)

200,000 Units In Five Years

Taubes stood where Farnam Courts once featured 244 low-income housing units. Now, 94 new apartments have replaced the dilapidated buildings at the front of the lot; more are on their way in the rear. Once completed, the second phase of the project will bring another 111 units, completing the new housing complex with fewer apartments than it had before.

Taubes moved into one of the eight market-rate apartments in the completed section of the development in February. Though mixed-income public housing investments like Mill River Crossing are a step forward, he said, the amount of construction happening now is a far cry short of what the state needs.

“What we’re seeing now is crumbs of what we actually need,” he said. ​“We need a full meal. They need to be thinking so much bigger than how they’re thinking right now.”

It was a relatively warm and sunny day Monday as Taubes stood outside his apartment building. Soon, temperatures will drop, and the lack of affordable housing in Connecticut will leave people out in the cold, he said. Taubes accused Gov. Ned Lamont of leaving low-income residents without homes because of his ​“debt diet” (reducing the amount of annual state bonding). He criticized Looney of not standing up to Lamont and demanding more funding for housing.

In March, the legislature passed a two-year bond package that included $200 million for affordable housing, most of it for a Flexible Housing Program, which provides grants and loans for affordable housing construction. Before that, Taubes argued, Lamont had done very little bonding for housing.

“It’s safe to say he could have added another zero or even two” to that $200 million, he said.

Taubes said he thinks the state should immediately borrow a large amount of money for affordable housing and for the development of more homeless shelters and other housing supports for low-income residents.

Now is a good time to do so, he said, because interest rates are historically low. A massive housing program would be cheaper now than it would be once interest rates rise again.

“Republicans say ​‘How can we pay for it?’” Taubes said. ​“In reality, we can’t afford not to pay for it.”

A massive housing program would stimulate the economy by employing large numbers of workers, bringing jobs to people who have been out of work during the pandemic, he said. People who were reliant on welfare will no longer be, costing the state less.

Ultimately, Taubes said, the state needs to build 150,000 new units of public housing in the next three years, and 200,000 in the next five. Most of it should be mixed income, he said, all affordable to people with low incomes but not necessarily restricted to them.

State spending is just one piece of the puzzle, Taubes said. He named a number of other mechanisms and pieces of legislation he would like to push through the legislature.

He said the state should pass a law ​“clarifying and affirming the obligation of every zoning board to promote affordable and fair housing.” Local zoning boards determine the zoning laws of Connecticut’s municipalities. In many places, like Woodbridge, local zoning laws have kept affordable housing out of town by restricting multi-unit developments or by imposing minimum lot sizes. But as Taubes pointed out, local zoning boards get their power from the state.

He said the state should strengthen existing laws like 8 – 30g, which incentivizes affordable housing construction by making it possible for developers to bypass local zoning laws in municipalities with less than 10 percent affordable housing. The legislature weakened the law in 2017, ultimately overriding a veto by then-Gov. Dannel Malloy. Taubes pointed out that Looney voted for the bill that weakened the law when it first passed through the legislature, though he voted to sustain Malloy’s veto. (New Haven’s other senator, Gary Winfield, did the same, supporting the bill at first and then deciding to sustain the veto.)

Looney was one of the legislators who helped push 8 – 30g through the legislature in the first place in the 1980s. He said he voted for the bill that weakened it in 2017 because he was confident Malloy would veto it, and his affirmative vote was tied to the passage of other bills. He said he planned to support the bill initially and then sustain Malloy’s veto, which the legislature ended up overriding.

Taubes also said that massive investments in public infrastructure should be coupled with defunding the war on drugs. ​“We waste so much time as a society, and money, locking people up for non-violent crimes,” he said. Those funds could be used instead to fund social programs.

Deregulate, Renegotiate, Stop Spending

In the empty rooms of the decaying section of the former Winchester Repeating Arms factory complex, Jameson White said he did not see an opportunity for housing, but a symbol of the dwindling number of manufacturing jobs in the state. As has happened all over the country, manufacturers have left Connecticut, leaving behind large industrial shells like the one at Winchester and Munson Street. (A number of the former Winchester buildings have been renovated and filled as part of the Science Park biotech center. Others remain vacant.)

White said the causes of the flight are the state’s high taxes and heavy regulations.

“In general, I feel that the state has way too many regulations on businesses,” he said. ​“A lot of them were born with good intentions. Politicians thought they were just looking out for consumers. But as the saying goes, the road to hell was paved with good intentions.”

White said he used to own a homecare company, and had to track every hour an employee worked and make sure the employees were licensed for those hours, which took a very long time. ​“I think when these politicians make [these rules], they don’t understand how time consuming it is to follow them,” he said.

White did not give specific examples of regulations he would like to repeal. He said there are too many to focus on one.

He said some are important. He wouldn’t want to repeal regulations that prevent dumping in rivers, for instance. But hairdressers, he said, should not need to have a license and pay a fee to work.

“The only way you’re going to bring jobs here is to incentivize businesses to move here,” he said. ​“And how do you incentivize businesses to move here? You make it cheaper to do business here.”

White said he would like to convene a meeting with companies that have left the state to determine why they moved. He said legislators need to hear from those companies to know how they can make the state attract business.

White listed a few other priorities he would champion if elected to the senate. Chief among the others would be to balance the state’s budget. ​“One of the biggest problems in the state is spending,” he said.

One way to cut costs would be to take a closer look at state contracts, he said. He said contracts should be revisited every year, instead of every several years. In the private sector, if another vendor comes along offering a cheaper price, you switch. He said the state should operate like that.

Another way to realize savings would be to renegotiate with unions.

“We have too many state employees and in my opinion they’re paid too much,” he said. ​“And yeah, I know that’s not going to be popular.”

A major cost driver in the state that White said he would like to put on the bargaining table is the state’s pension plans. As is, they are unsustainable, he said.

Connecticut’s State Employee Retirement System, the pension plan for state employees, had about $22 billion in unfunded liabilities as of July, 2019. That meant the plan was funded at 38 percent of its total long-term liabilities.

White said the state should renegotiate pension agreements to lower the benefits, or perhaps raise the age of retirement for new hires who have not yet entered pension plans.

Looney pointed out that the state has already negotiated its state pension plan to make it far less generous than it was at its inception. It now has multiple tiers. The latest tier, which the legislature passed in 2017, is ​“barely a pension plan,” Looney said.

To White, it is still too generous. Ultimately, he said, the state should do away with pensions entirely and adopt defined contribution plans like 401Ks in which the state matches employee contributions, but does not promise fixed payout amounts after retirement.

Looney dismissed that idea. ​“That’s the typical approach of Republicans trying to abandon workers to leave their fate to whatever is happening in the market,” he said.

White also said he thinks the state should implement a school-choice model with vouchers. Parents would use their vouchers to apply to a school of their choice, rather than sending their children to the school in their district, and schools would accept students based on how many slots they have. State funding for schools would be based on the number of vouchers the school receives, so it would create competition, he said, and incentivize schools to improve the way they educate students.

He said that in the short term, the system would result in lower funding for lower-performing schools, but that that would incentivize them to cut expenses, and get rid of bad teachers. He said the system needs to hold teachers accountable.

White said he is skeptical that New Haven and Hamden, with such high tax rates, can’t fund their education system. He said he is sure they are wasting money.

Looney was unequivocal in his denunciation of White’s voucher plan.

“What that would do is destroy the public schools. What that would do is add to the resources of the schools that already have enough resources,” he said.

Looney Targets Tax Structure

Looney said that in his next session, if reelected, he would continue his crusade to change Connecticut’s tax system to make it more equitable.

“My goal is always to make our tax structure more progressive in any way that we can get consensus to do that,” he said. 

Looney has been a proponent of many changes to the state’s tax structures in the past. Some, like the creation of the earned income tax credit, have become law. Attempts to smooth over the massive mill rate disparities between towns and revisit the state’s reliance on local property taxes have failed to garner enough support in the suburban-dominated legislature.

In an interview, Looney proposed a number of changes to the state’s various taxing mechanisms.

First, he said he would like to create a separate tax on capital gains and dividend income with a higher rate than for the earned income tax.

To address the mill rate disparities, he suggested a statewide 1 mill property tax with a $100,000 homestead exemption. The homestead exemption would exempt homeowners from paying that tax on $100,000 of their property’s assessed value. That would mean that in lower-income municipalities where homes are assessed at lower values, like in New Haven and parts of Hamden, homeowners would have to pay very little, if any, of the tax. Places like Greenwich, on the other hand, would provide a significant amount of revenue for the state.

He said the state could use that tax to incentivize affordable housing construction by levying a surcharge on the tax based on what percent of a municipality’s housing stock is considered affordable. Municipalities with less affordable housing would pay more of the tax, while those with more affordable housing would pay less. Looney said the revenue from that tax would be redistributed to distressed municipalities with high mill rates and low property values to relieve the tax burden there. Some would also pay for state expenses like transportation infrastructure, he said.

As he has discussed in the past, Looney also said he would like to rework the state’s payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) programs, which reimburse municipalities for lost tax revenue from tax-exempt properties like universities, hospitals, and those owned by the state.

He said the problem with the PILOT system is that when the state makes its PILOT appropriation every year, it provides the same level of reimbursement to every municipality. Instead, he said, it should have a tiered system, where municipalities with higher percentages of tax exempt property, like New Haven, get a higher reimbursement rate.

He said the PILOT programs should also take into account the property values of the municipalities they provide for. Municipalities with low property values should get higher rates of PILOT reimbursement, he said. 

Taubes criticized Looney for not yet having managed to pass the progressive tax reform legislation that he has talked about. ​“He’s been in there for 40 years, but what has he done?” Taubes asked.

He said Looney should start his negotiations for a statewide property tax at 5 mills, not one. ​“Multiply it by five. That’s where you should be starting,” he said.

Looney responded that passing legislation in Connecticut that benefits urban centers is harder than it is in other states.

Connecticut’s three largest cities combined — New Haven, Bridgeport, and Hartford — make up only 11 percent of the state’s population, meaning they do not have large legislative delegations. Only six of 36 senators represent cities, and all represent both parts of a city as well as parts of suburbs. In New York, New York City comprises 43 percent of the state’s population. If Connecticut’s cities had the representation that the Big Apple does in Albany, they would have 15 seats in the State Senate.

“More credit should be given for what we’ve been able to do despite the large odds against us,” Looney argued.

Those odds don’t stop him from pushing bills that will not be popular in smaller towns, though those towns will make another repeat proposal of his tough to pass: Looney said he would like to begin his push for regional school districts again, rather than having ​“169 jealous fiefdoms.”

Regionalization could help cut down on the overall costs of school administration in the state, because towns could share district administration. It would also help smooth over the inequities between school districts by pooling the resources of multiple municipalities. Towns and cities with low-income populations and low property values struggle to fund education, while wealthier towns have the tax base to support well-resourced school districts.

Last year, Looney proposed a bill that he said he hoped would get the ball rolling on discussions about district consolidation. It proposed that towns with populations over 40,000 would keep their own districts, but smaller towns would consolidate.

Those small towns put up a fight. Looney said that race and class often comes into play with district consolidation because the residents of some towns don’t want to send their kids to school with the students of more diverse or lower-income neighboring towns.

Small towns will continue to put up a fight, he said. ​“But we have to keep raising it because it’s an issue of justice.”

Looney said he agrees with Taubes that the state needs to be more aggressive in promoting affordable housing development. He said a part of that would be more bonding.

Affordable housing should not just be built in cities, he said. He said the state should strengthen 8 – 30g and provide more incentives for municipalities to achieve higher percentages of affordable housing. He suggested an idea that has been proposed in California in which the state could have more power over zoning close to state-operated transit hubs in order to build more affordable housing there.

Theoretically, the state could ban zoning laws like minimum lot sizes and restrictions on multi-family housing, but Looney said that would be ​“like the third rail politically.”

“I think incentives have to be tried first,” he said. ​“The resistance is so great, and the urban interests are outnumbered in the legislature.”

Looney, Taubes, and White are scheduled face off in a virtual debate hosted by the Independent on Oct. 21 before the Nov. 3 election. The debate begins at 7 p.m. and can be viewed on the Independent’s Facebook page. The candidates will respond to questions from representatives of the Independent, La Voz Hispana, Inner City News, and New Haven Register.