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Rep. Steve Weir, R-Hebron, debates a bill on housing and utility bills on the final day of the legislative session in Hartford on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. Credit: Ginny Monk / CT Mirror

The Connecticut House declined to call a bill Wednesday that would have increased penalties for repeated building and fire code violations and require nonresident landlords to register personal identifying information.

Majority Leader Jason Rojas said that the bill was dead after Rep. Steve Weir, R-Hebron, and other Republican legislators threatened to run the clock out on debate until the end of the night. 

“They have had all session to get it in the room, and now I find out that there’s been an unwillingness to compromise and kind of take it or leave it was what I heard, and that doesn’t work for me,” Weir said.

Senate Bill 274 was introduced by the Planning and Development Committee at the start of the legislative session and is closely related to safety concerns at the Concierge Apartments in Rocky Hill, where 2,000 residents had to find new housing at the beginning of February due to flooding and lack of heat. 

Attorney General William Tong, who launched an investigation on the matter, announced at the end of February that the owners of the apartment, Los Angeles-based private equity firm JRK Property Holdings, under the entity Century Hills, would pay more than $5 million in restitution to tenants who spent several weeks living in hotels. JRK Property Holdings has $15 billion in real estate assets under management in 23 states. 

Zach van Luling, a Rocky Hill town councilor, said he is disappointed that they do not have the support to hold non-resident apartment owners, like those at Concierge, accountable for their actions directly. He said the bill would have prevented large companies like JRK Holdings from hiding behind large corporate structures. 

“This bill is really about making it so that other municipalities who face similar problems with bad-actor property owners from out of state, [it] gives them the opportunity to have a bigger stick to wave,” van Luling said. 

Under the bill, towns would have been responsible for collecting a property owner’s driver’s license number, home address, phone number and date of birth. Weir said he found the requirement “incredible intrusive” and that the name, phone number and address would have been suitable. Weir, who has been a service provider to apartments, said there is frequent turnover of landowners, and the bill does not account for these situations. 

“I have no issue with holding people accountable. There should be a point of contact, there should be a mechanism or a method that is kind of foolproof,” he said. 

Weir said towns have not received any guidance on how to collect landlord information. 

Weir said that towns including Rocky Hill have the authority to impose the requirements in the bill in their own towns if they wanted to but that not every town in the state may want to follow suit. 

The bill passed in the Senate on party lines, 24-10, and passed unanimously through the Planning and Development Committee before that. 

Even though JRK Property Holdings is working through financial agreements, van Luling said they are still hearing about problems at Concierge, such as false alarms. From February 1 to April 29, there were 23 false alarm calls at the complex, many of which were due to work crews not doing dust control, he said. 

“These are resources in our town that are getting expended,” he said. “We have to have a bigger stick when it comes to bullying fire code violations. You have to be able to have repeat offenders face a stronger penalty than the first time.”

Concierge Apartments did not respond to a request for comment. 

Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, who had been working closely with his district and residents living in Concierge, said that even though they were able to work through the problems from February, it was hard to contact representatives of Concierge.

“We need more tools to help towns combat out-of-state irresponsible landlords who are many times owned by faceless private equity firms,” Lesser said.

Lesser said he is going to continue to listen to the people in his district and is planning to address the issue again next session.

“There are towns that are in similar situations each and every day,” Lesser said. “It’s disappointing that we’re not moving forward on addressing this issue … that could really help some of our local leaders get a handle on this issue.” 

Weir said he is willing to work with party leaders next session on a compromise. 

Sara is a legislative reporting intern at CT Mirror. She is a senior at the University of Connecticut pursuing a dual degree in journalism and political science, with minors in environmental studies and English. Last year, Sara served as the editor-in-chief of The Daily Campus, UConn’s student-run newspaper and has reported campus news since her freshman year. She is the current president of UConn’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and magazine editor at Nutmeg Publishing, UConn’s yearbook and magazine publication. Outside of UConn, Sara has interned at the Worcester Business Journal, the Valley Breeze and the Community Advocate, where she covered schools, businesses, local governments and community town news.