Westport Officials Send Bipartisan Letter To Gov. Lamont Urging Veto Of HB 5002

Press release from the Town of Westport:

WESTPORT, CT — Westport officials have sent Gov. Ned Lamont the following letter urging the governor to veto the housing bill HB 5002, "An Act Concerning Housing and the Needs of Homeless Persons":

Dear Governor Lamont:

We, the undersigned bipartisan elected officials from Westport, respectfully urge you to veto HB 5002.

We appreciate the time you've taken to carefully review this complex and wide-ranging piece of legislation, which merges over 22 separate bills-many of which contain overlapping and sometimes conflicting policy proposals.

Westport has taken meaningful, proactive steps to expand access to housing in line with your call for local leadership and the guidance of the state Department of Housing. The Westport Planning & Zoning Commission has approved numerous mixed-income, multifamily developments, including ground-up construction, adaptive reuse of office buildings (where parking and infrastructure make such conversions viable), and the rezoning of large areas for transit-oriented, mixed-income housing. These include neighborhoods adjacent to the train and a former corporate office park in a more rural section of town.

We've also established a dedicated Affordable Housing Fund-already exceeding $1 million­ and rezoned nearly every town-owned parcel to allow for higher-density, 100% affordable cottage cluster housing with flexible parking standards and setbacks. Westport further supports a robust public transportation network, providing low-cost, door-to-door shuttle service to the train from every neighborhood, connecting residents of new housing developments directly to transit options.

Beyond these recent accomplishments, Westport has maintained a homeless shelter downtown, along with additional older affordable housing units and supportive housing units, all established before 1989 and thus not necessarily recognized as part of our affordable housing stock

Despite this record of leadership, we have deep concerns with HB 5002. It is filled not with voluntary tools or incentives, but with sweeping mandates that pose real risks to both local governance and the broader state economy-without meaningfully accelerating the creation of affordable housing. These include:

1. The prohibition on parking requirements for all residential developments under 24 units and the shifting of responsibility for determining parking need to developers for projects over 24 units (Section 2, 8-2(d)(9)). This is a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to account for local context and will overburden neighborhoods without adequate public transit.
2. The as-of-right conversion of all commercially zoned properties into residential use statewide (Section 2(b)(11)) undermines thoughtful economic planning. This policy creates fiscal uncertainty for municipalities like ours, whose tax base depends heavily on a mix of retail, commercial, and residential development.
3. The provision allowing courts to require municipalities to pay developers' legal fees in 8-30g litigation further tilts the scales against local governments. This financial exposure will discourage towns from defending themselves--even in cases where proposed projects threaten local infrastructure and sensitive environmental resources.

We are also alarmed by the bill's attempt to impose complex, top-down "fair share" housing quotas-formulas devised, as you memorably noted at your press conference, by PhDs-without accounting for infrastructure realities or meaningful local planning. Moreover, penalizing towns like Westport by deprioritizing us for state infrastructure aid, such as funding for culverts, bridges, and roads, is counterproductive to the meaningful investment your administration has made in upgrading infrastructure across the state. Measuring progress through building permits as opposed to P&Z approvals, is unfair to towns.

Your administration's alternative proposals-encouraging towns to develop Priority Housing Plans and to proactively zone for meaningful growth-reflect a more collaborative, effective path forward. We remain fully committed to continuing to remove red tape and pursuing mixed­ income development in a way that reflects each town's capacity.

We urge you to continue promoting partnership over preemption-and to veto HB 5002. Yours truly,

Jennifer Tooker, First Selectwoman, Andrea Moore, Second Selectwoman, and Candice Savin, Third Selectwoman

Jeff Wieser, RTM Moderator and Lauren Karpf, RTM Deputy Moderator

Lee Caney, Board of Finance Chair and Michael Keller, Board of Finance Vice Chair Paul Lebowitz, P&Z Chair and Neil Cohn, P&Z Vice Chair

Letter to Governor Lamont

This press release was produced by the Town of Westport. The views expressed here are the author’s own.