Bill Highlights from Second Last Day of Session

June 4, 2019

Many important bills pass the House of Representatives that will benefit Enfield residents.

  • AN ACT CONCERNING CRUMBLING CONCRETE FOUNDATIONS

The bill does the following: 

  1. Require the Commissioner of Housing to establish a grant program to support the development of methods and technologies that reduce the average cost of repairing and replacing concrete foundations in this state that have deteriorated due to the presence of pyrrhotite.
  2. Establish an innovation board to review applications for grants filed as part of such program.
  3. Appropriate the sum of eight million dollars to fund grants awarded as part of such program.
  4. Modify the Healthy Homes Fund surcharge.
  5. Redefine the term "residential building" as such term applies to various statutes concerning crumbling concrete foundations.
  • AN ACT ADDRESSING OPIOID USE

Despite the opioid overdose epidemic is stabilizing, it still remains 1.7 times higher than the national average. This is attributed to local and state overdose prevention procedures. This bill will continue to help drive down the opioid use in our state.

This is an issue that I have tirelessly worked on to ensure our youth are protected. 

  • AN ACT ESTABLISHING A TASK FORCE TO ANALYZE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF LAWS GOVERNING DYSLEXIA INSTRUCTION AND TRAINING

This bill would establish a task force to make recommendations to ensure our teachers are being properly educated and receive appropriate in-service training/professional development in order to meet the needs of students with dyslexia.

  • AN ACT CONCERNING ABANDONED AND BLIGHTED PROPERTY STEWARDSHIP

Connecticut is suffering from an abundance of homes that have been abandoned or blighted (unsafe, uninhabitable, and not being worked upon), which is creating a situation throughout the state of lowered property values, danger because of unsafe buildings, and financial burdens upon municipalities that cannot gain property taxes from the residence. S.B. 1070 would enable municipalities to have court appointed conservators to bring residential, commercial, and industrial buildings that fall under categorically unsafe and uninhabitable standards and have been petitioned by the court by defined interested parties to municipal code compliance (standards on which the municipality has agreed upon regarding how to purchase/repair/treat abandoned property).

  • AN ACT ACCELERATING THE DEPLOYMENT OF 5G WIRELESS FACILITIES

Governor Lamont acknowledged that the next generation of cellular data transmission can help facilitate economic growth, create new jobs, improve high speed internet accessibility and is the future of telecommunications. The bill was introduced calls for the regulatory agencies to work out a collection of logistical standards so that the telecommunication companies have a set of rules for installing all the new equipment and begin the first steps of creating the necessary backbone to support 5G service.