The House of Representatives gave final approval in special session Thursday to an omnibus bill — a “grab bag,” in one lawmaker’s view — whose major provision grants a New Haven-based public water authority the ability to make a bid for the Aquarion Water Company.
With Gov. Ned Lamont’s signature a certainty, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority now will turn to preparing its formal bid to buy Aquarion, an Eversource Energy subsidiary, and expand the authority into a provider of water to more than one-third of Connecticut.
Larry Bingaman, the president and chief executive officer of the regional authority, said the authority has been gleaning public documents to assess Aquarion’s value in preparation for Eversource providing a formal bidding package later this summer to potential buyers.
The bill passed the House on an 82-42 vote that blurred party lines, a sharp departure from the debate and party-line vote Wednesday in the Senate, where the Democratic majority voted as a bloc in favor and the GOP minority was uniformly opposed.
Much of the opposition turned on the absence of a public hearing or other vetting of an issue that was an 11th-hour addition to the agenda of the special session. Its original purpose was revising the rules for motor vehicle assessments and undoing a 2022 change that could have resulted in dramatic increases in taxes on commercial vehicles.
House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, was one of 16 House Republicans who joined with 66 Democrats in favor. Ten Democrats joined 32 Republicans in opposition.
Echoing assurances Bingaman made outside the chamber, Candelora said there would be ample review and public input, first by the Regional Water Authority’s policy and governing boards and then by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority if Eversource accepts its bid.
“I like the local control that the Regional Water Authority has. Every town that sits has a member on that board. They get to vote on every increase. There’s public hearings with openness and transparency,” Candelora said. “So while yes, this charter change did not get a public hearing, if our RWA decides to bid on this, they’re going to have to have a public hearing.”
If purchased by the RWA, the expanded new Aquarion Water Authority would be outside the rate review of state regulators, who recently rejected an Aquarion request for a rate increase and actually mandated a cut that is now the subject of an appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court.
Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, the co-chair of the legislative committee that would have vetted the bill if proposed in regular session, noted that the other items in the omnibus came from bills that were reviewed, heard and largely supported during the regular session that ended May 8.
“I am OK with most of the stuff, but I can’t help but call out the one thing that simply doesn’t belong here because it did not have a public hearing,” Steinberg said.
He also said some lawmakers resented the inclusion of the Aquarion provision when a climate crisis bill that passed the House and died from inaction in the Senate was not part of it.
Rep. Christine Palm, D-Chester, the lead sponsor of the climate bill, did not speak during the debate, but she joined Steinberg in voting no. Outside the chamber, she said the Aquarion issue was not vetted and its passage created a bad precedent.
She also was concerned about language that streamlines the process for approving development in historic buildings. A more controversial section that would have allowed developers to pay a fee or penalty in lieu of meeting the demands of the State Historic Preservation Office was stripped before the Senate debate.
“I think it makes it too easy for those who are well-heeled enough to buy their way into a situation,” said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford.
House leaders insisted on the change, said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford.
“We heard our caucus and we made the change, and I called the Senate president and governor’s office and said, ‘Look, we’ve got to go in different directions,’” Ritter said.
Under the new law, the preservation office would have just 30 days to make an initial determination of a project’s impact on “historic structures and landmarks” and, if possible, propose a “feasible alternative” the developer could pursue to avoid the impact. If there’s no alternative, the office would have to propose a mitigation plan within the next 15 days.
The bill also includes a special request of the governor and the Department of Economic and Community Development aimed at attracting certain kinds of financial services companies to the state that serve corporate customers.
These banks don’t offer personal banking for everyday retail clients, and thus are not insured by the FDIC; in Connecticut statue, they’re referred to as “uninsured banks.” That could now change. Across 40 pages of the special session bill, every instance of the term “uninsured bank” in state law was changed to “innovation bank.”
The bill also reverses a provision inserted in a fiscal bill at the end of the regular session in May that would have allowed construction management companies to bid on work in school projects for which they had overall responsibility.