State Rep. Roland Lemar at WNHH FM; below, his Facebook reaction to gubernatorial housing veto.
One sentence. Seventeen words.
That’s all Roland Lemar needed to express his outrage at Gov. Ned Lamont.
He unleashed the sentence on Facebook. Here’s the sentence he wrote:
“At the end of the day, he really is just the Governor of Greenwich and Associated Lands.”
The sentence was prompted by a veto the governor issued last week. He vetoed House Bill 5002, the first serious effort passed by the legislature in a generation to address Connecticut’s affordable housing crisis. The legislature’s Democratic majority passed it at the behest of and in consultation with the Democratic governor’s own office. The bill would have required towns to set goals for building new affordable housing, change zoning rules to allow developers to build up to nine-unit apartment buildings as of right in commercial areas, and prevent towns from stopping plans based on parking requirements.
Fairfield County town officials reacted in outrage. Lamont, who’s from Greenwich, said that even though their claims were in some cases not based on fact, he needed to veto the law and seek a rewrite in order to get needed buy-in from the towns.
Not coincidentally, Lamont had also just signaled that he’s likely to seek a third four-year term.
Lemar, who has represented New Haven’s 96th General Assembly District for 15 years, was among the Democrats who felt betrayed. So much that he took to Facebook to not just disagree, but question the very mission of the governor from his own party.
While that one sentence said a lot, it suggested Lemar might have more to say on the subject.
He said more about it in an interview Tuesday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.” You’ve read the Facebook sentence. Following is an edited version of Lemar’s Talmudic commentary in that interview from his own original text, reflecting the deeper outrage and frustrations Lamont’s veto engendered in a wing of his party that may feel it has nowhere else to turn to exert leverage on him in the next election cycle:
"The Governor Fell For ... Fear-Mongering"
I’m infuriated at this. We’ve spent the better part of a decade looking at comprehensive housing proposals that would move the needle for constituents here in our state, one we have some of the tightest real estate markets in the country. The rental occupancy rate exists around 95 percent, which makes it almost impossible for folks to find affordable places to live.
We don’t construct anywhere near enough housing to meet the demands of today’s economy. What we proposed this year was on the backs of years and years of efforts that have been forestalled and just completely stopped by our suburban counterparts.
HB 5002, negotiated with public policy advocates, civil rights advocates, business interests and the governor’s office, represented the first real comprehensive piece of legislation we’ve been able to get through. It is really hard to move a suburban-dominated state in a housing area. It’s almost impossible to get suburban interests to take housing availability seriously. They’ve spent an entire half century erecting barriers to affordable housing construction in our communities through antiquated zoning constructs and erecting ridiculous barriers to the idea of private developers coming.
5002 took some of the first small steps necessary to address this problem. [Then] the governor spent almost a month having a tortured experience listening to some of the worst NIMBYs in the country. The mayors and first selectmen of some of these Fairfield towns completely demonize the bill, misrepresent its aspects, talk about things that weren’t even in there, and try to scare and fear-monger people into being against it. And the governor fell for it.
If you watched his press conferences, the governor came out and said, “Yeah, I know a lot of it is inaccurate. I know there’s a lot of misrepresentations, but I kind of think the towns need to be brought in.”
No, these towns will never be bought in. They can’t be brought in. They’re some of the wealthiest communities in the entire world. There’s no amount of money that can buy them in. You cannot convince them to do something they do not want to do.
It was an embarrassing, frustrating few weeks watching the governor give voice to the people who’ve stood in the way of positive housing development.
I know communities have been using this line about we need to preserve “neighborhood character.” What they mean by “character”: They oppose anything that has multiple units.
The idea is that “we need to preserve our unique status and like our strength is our small towns.”
In the 5,000 square-foot single-family home that you allow, as of right, with two tennis courts, a five-car garage, an in-home movie theater — if you just made that a two-family instead, it would cause “enormous” problems. You’d have months and months of hearings. You’d have to go out and you’d have to advertise or your neighbors would have to be notified that you’re going to make this a two-family home.
There are communities in the state that require multiple acres to ensure the “character” of the community — which the courts have held to be a proxy for people who do not want to diversify their housing stock or their population. They’ve used “character” for race and income.
There’s a tenuous balance that Connecticut has felt comfortable dealing with for over almost a century now: Let the cities deal with their own problems, and us rich suburban towns will just give them more money. Even legislators in the urban areas of Connecticut were part of that deal. It’s like, okay, what a personal incentive.
It doesn’t work. There isn’t enough housing opportunity in this state. You want to be able to look at the state as a whole and recognize how much better would my life be if I was able to live a little bit closer to my job, if I was able to be able to go to a well-resourced school district, if I was well able to live in a community close to my commute so I don’t have to own two cars to make my family work. I can jump on the train, I can jump on the bus, I can get to the work.
I’m worried, because we decided to give voice to those folks who used a series of dishonest and fear-mongering tactics to defeat the bill and get the governor to veto it. They’re just going to have their voice amplified even more over the next few months. The next few weeks and months are going to need housing advocates, the younger generation of Connecticut voters, to speak up and stand up and say, “We demand more out of the Democratic Party here.”
The governor has been governor for six and a half years now. If he decides to run, he’s going to be hard to beat, and it’ll be five and a half more years of Gov. Lamont. What does that mean? What does it mean to be a Democrat right now, if it isn’t about tackling housing crisis, if it isn’t about protecting striking workers?
Look, I’m going to support him against [Republicans] Erin Stewart and Ryan Fazio. But I think he needs to spend some time over these next few months telling us what this next campaign is going to be.
Gov. Lamont is a healthy man. He’s active; he’s engaged. I don’t question his ability to do this job. I do question what it’s about. If it’s not about something like this [housing bill], what is there?
Click on the video below to watch the full discussion with State Rep. Roland Lemar about the recently completed state legislative session. Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.”