The General Assembly’s two-day special session opens Wednesday with House votes planned on four bills that underscore a partisan divide on housing and immigration in Connecticut, but also a willingness to cooperate in preserving a social safety net and a struggling hospital in Waterbury. 

The Senate votes Thursday. If all goes as planned, the legislature will put four bills on the desk of Gov. Ned Lamont by Friday, setting the stage for the Democrat to formally launch his campaign for a third term with a degree of momentum, if not without challenges to address in the regular session in February.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said Tuesday he will open the session with a debate on the revised version of House Bill 5002, an omnibus housing bill Lamont unexpectedly vetoed in June after the regular session, siding with Republican opponents and infuriating Democratic supporters.

“It will start bumpy, and it will land more smoothly,” Ritter said of the day. He noted that any measure pressuring suburbs to allow more multi-family housing “remains kind of an issue that divides the parties, frankly, in our chamber.” No Republican voted for H.B. 5002.

House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford, forecasted more than a little turbulence, as did Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield.

“I think tomorrow is going to be a barn burner,” Candelora said Tuesday. “It is one thing to go into session to address a potential emergency — and that being the federal shutdown and the loss of programs that impact Connecticut residents. And I think that Republicans stepped to the plate to meet that moment and to help our residents. It’s a whole other thing to start pushing agenda items that not only aren’t emergent in nature, but I think were already hotly contested in the regular session.”

The special session coincides with the U.S. House returning to Washington after nearly a two-month absence to vote on reopening the federal government, a step that takes away the sense of urgency, at least among Republicans, to empower the governor to subsidize federal hunger, nutrition and home heating programs.

Despite opposition by President Donald J. Trump to states offering alternative funding during the shutdown, leaders of the Republican minorities in the General Assembly had voiced support for giving Lamont authority to spend state funds for SNAP and WIC food assistance and LIHEAP heating funding.

“I don’t think you’re going to get as much bipartisan support on this funding now that the shutdown is ending and SNAP is restored,” Harding said.

Prior to the shutdown, Democrats had urged the governor to call a special session to increase state budget reserves in anticipation of needing to meet federal cuts that were passed in July in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but will not be felt fully until after the midterm elections in 2026.

One of the bills up for a vote Wednesday will give the governor emergency authority to exceed the spending cap and raise the ceiling on the state’s rainy day fund by $500 million. It now has $4.3 billion, the maximum allowed by the statutory limit of 18% of the general fund.

With the shutdown in mind, the bill gives Lamont authority to draw from the budget reserves within certain parameters until the regular session begins on Feb. 4.

“Look, the $500 million is a safety net. ‘On again, off again.’ You never knew what the federal government was doing,” Lamont said. “That was loud and clear when it came to SNAP. We had six different directives in seven different days. Maybe they’re going to solve the shutdown over the next 48 hours. Little less need for the $500 million at that point, but at least we have the backstop if we need it.”

Decisions on how to use the $500 million most likely won’t be made until the regular session. 

Even if federal funding of SNAP is restored, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tightened the eligibility requirements, most likely denying about 10% of the 366,000 recipients aid over the next three months. A more expensive loss to address are expiring subsidies that make health insurance affordable on the exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act.

Those could cost $350 million annually, Ritter said at a press conference Monday.

“So, you got to be more careful about the Big Beautiful Bill cuts, but we’re going to make sure that nobody vulnerable gets left behind,” Lamont said Tuesday after a press conference at Waterbury Hospital.

A third bill scheduled for a vote Wednesday would enable UConn Health to purchase and make improvements at Waterbury Hospital, then operate it under a public private partnership. The fourth bill was a legislative catch-all, with provisions on childhood mental health, a funding mechanism for a cancer fund, and limits on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can operate around courthouses and access health data.

The immigration measure is expected to get pushback from Republicans, who have accused Democrats of hindering federal law enforcement operations.

Lamont and Comptroller Sean Scanlon, who helped negotiate the Waterbury deal, said the state must do more to stabilize affordable health care.

With Lamont’s support, Scanlon has been working on a public health insurance option, reviving an effort Scanlon first made as a state lawmaker in 2019. The governor and comptroller promise to roll out details in the near future, most likely with an eye towards legislative action next year.

“There’s two prongs in health care right now: The cost of delivering it costs too much, and the insurance that covers that care is covering too little,” Scanlon said. “And the small group market that helps a lot of people insure, that is dying. And so I think what the governor’s strategy is going forward is a multi-pronged approach to make sure that everyone in Connecticut has access to care through affordable insurance, and that everyone that goes to use that insurance can get affordable, low cost, but high quality care.”

Candelora complained Tuesday that lawmakers would be returning to Hartford on Wednesday without seeing fully vetted legislation. Lamont and Democratic lawmakers released a summary of the housing bill on Friday.

He objected to a provision that would allow housing to be built as of right in commercial zones.

“You know, local zoning is there for a reason, but we are prioritizing housing over commercial needs that help support a tax base, but also enhance the quality of communities,” Candelora said.

House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said the revised bill allows for greater influence than the original over housing that could go in commercial zones.

“We did it with parameters” suggested by local officials, Rojas said. One change, he said, is that housing can be built as a right in commercial zones, but not as a conversion of existing commercial buildings.

In vetoing the original bill, that was one of the provisions Lamont had applauded.

“Commercial ‘as of right’ makes really good sense to me,” Lamont said. “Rather than have an empty, underused office building, people can convert that, do that, you know, more quickly and readily. But I think we have to do it the way that people buy in.”