{"id":382371,"date":"2025-11-16T06:02:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T06:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/382371\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T06:02:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T06:02:42","slug":"ct-senate-passes-behavioral-health-bill-that-also-limits-ice-actions-approves-uconn-hospital-purchase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/382371\/","title":{"rendered":"CT Senate Passes Behavioral Health Bill That Also Limits ICE Actions, Approves UConn Hospital Purchase"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ManState Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, speaks before the Senate\u2019s special session on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025 at the state Capitol in Hartford. Credit: Donald Eng \/ CTNewsJunkie<\/p>\n

As the clock passed 11 p.m. Thursday, the state Senate continued to debate a large housing bill that had cleared the state House Wednesday 95-56<\/a> on a mostly party-line vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fact that they (House Republicans) hated it so much gives an indication of how important it obviously is,\u201d said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven before the Senate special session Thursday. \u201cAnd so we\u2019re willing to deal with that \u2026 or whatever it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill, HB-8002, makes numerous changes in regards to housing and planning and zoning<\/a>, according to the bill analysis. It includes dozens of sections with things like a first-time homebuyer savings program, a requirement for a town to either opt into a regional Council of Governments (COG) plan or develop their own plan to increase affordable housing and submit it to a COG every five years, a requirement for the housing department to create a plan to provide portable laundry and shower facilities for people experiencing homelessness, creation of fair rent commissions for communities larger than 15,000 residents and making it easier for owners of commercial buildings to convert their buildings for residential use.ct<\/p>\n

Looney predicted the bill would be a major achievement in state policy, citing affordable housing as a state goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one of those areas where state policy, I think, has to take precedence of the sort of NIMBY objections that you have at the local level,\u201d Looney said.<\/p>\n

Republicans appeared united against the bill, which Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield called \u201cthe biggest step toward statewide zoning that has ever occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called the bill \u201ccompletely antithetical to any level of local control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ManSenate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, talks about the Senate special session on Nov. 13, 2025 at the Capitol in Hartford, CT. Credit: Donald Eng \/ CTNewsJunkie<\/p>\n

\u201cYour town, at some point, if this Democratic majority continues controlling this issue, is going to have Hartford determining what gets built and where it gets built,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Debate on the bill, which began shortly before 8 p.m., was ongoing as the clock ticked past 11 p.m.<\/p>\n

Prior to taking up the housing bill the Senate approved creation of a $500 million reserve<\/a> against potential federal cuts to social programs like SNAP, WIC, LIHEAP, health care and student loan cuts.<\/p>\n

The measure passed along mostly party lines, with three Republicans joining the Democrats to make up the final 27-8 vote. The House had a somewhat more bipartisan vote, approving the bill 126-20.<\/p>\n

The Senate also in a bipartisan vote approved UConn Health Center\u2019s purchase of Waterbury Hospital 31-4. That bill, HB 8001, had passed the House Wednesday with a 133-11 majority.<\/p>\n

A wide-ranging children\u2019s behavioral health bill also passed the Senate on a 27-8, mostly party-line vote with Jason Perillo of Shelton, Tony Hwang of Fairfield and Henri Martin of Bristol joining the Democrats in supporting.HB 8004, a large multi-faceted bill, had also codified in law some judicial rules on federal agents<\/a> wearing masks and\u00a0 arresting people in courthouses who were there on minor charges and also limited information sharing between state agencies and non-state agencies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, speaks before the Senate\u2019s special session on Thursday, Nov.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":382372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[120912,852,31429,46039,210,1141,1142,7065,182938,551,182939,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-382371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-400pfriday","tag-affordable-housing","tag-eng","tag-extra","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-housing","tag-martin-looney","tag-push","tag-stephen-harding","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115557862699876549","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}