It was once said by Justice Louis Brandeis that “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” By that measure, the legislative process surrounding Connecticut’s House Bill 5002 must be considered a petri dish cultivated in permanent darkness.
What ought to have been exposed to the full glare of public scrutiny was instead drafted behind closed doors, shielded from daylight, and ushered toward enactment beneath a veil of procedural subterfuge. The 92-page amendment to HB 5002—delivered with less than 24 hours’ notice before a potential full vote—did not so much revise housing policy as it reordered the constitutional relationship between towns and the state. It did so without candor, consensus, or the consent of the governed. This was not legislation in the classical sense—born of deliberation, informed by testimony, refined through debate. This was a bureaucratic ambush, meticulously timed to avoid scrutiny and engineered to suppress resistance.
Let us be plain: this is not how a republic behaves.
Across Connecticut, citizens of all political persuasions—urban and suburban, liberal and conservative—have met this maneuver with confusion, alarm, and a growing sense of betrayal.
Local officials, neighborhood advocates, even veteran legislators were kept in the dark until the last possible moment. When the bill finally surfaced, it bore no resemblance to the modest “study” legislation originally proposed.
It is not cynical to see this for what it is. It is realistic. This was the plan.
For there is no evidence that the people of Connecticut—whether in Bridgeport or Branford,
New Canaan or Groton—asked for such sweeping centralization. They did not clamor for state-imposed mandates, for the erosion of municipal discretion, or for the imposition of one-size-fits-all zoning doctrines on communities with distinct identities and constraints. What they wanted, and have always wanted, is a voice. What they may now receive is a command.
The new legislation—expansive in scope, accelerated in delivery, and opaque in process—relied not on persuasion, but exhaustion. It sought no consensus, because it welcomed no dissent. Citizens were not invited to shape it. They are dared to stop it.
Even the most seasoned legislators had not been able to read it. And until its release yesterday, lawmakers from every corner of the state asked the same basic, damning question—Where is the bill?
No answer came, because the votes were being curried and counted.
This is not merely a breach of decorum or deviation from best practice. It is a violation of first principles. In a government derived from the people, legitimacy does not spring from authority alone—it springs from process.
A law crafted in secrecy and passed under duress may be binding, but it is not binding in spirit. It may be constitutional, but it is not democratic.
The tragedy is twofold. First, that sweeping policy has been enacted without the transparency that free people not only expect but deserve. Second, that this very method—secrecy, speed, and exclusion—is becoming normalized. The erosion of public trust is not a collateral casualty. It is the intended consequence.
Connecticut, once a paragon of town governance and civic particularism, now finds itself subject to a method of lawmaking that confuses silence for consent and fatigue for acquiescence. This week’s housing bill is not merely a land-use measure. It is a case study in soft authoritarianism—the assumption that government’s job is not to listen but to manage, not to represent but to direct.
The citizens of Connecticut deserved an honest conversation. They were given a monologue instead.
This was not governance. It was orchestration. And if allowed to stand, it will not be the last.
