Connecticut’s Excess Cost Grant is a crucial state program that helps school districts cover the extraordinary costs of educating students with disabilities who require intensive, individualized services.

These are students with the most significant needs, students who deserve every opportunity to thrive, and who often rely on specialized supports to access a free and appropriate public education. Yet for years, the state and federal governments have underfunded this grant, shifting the financial burden onto local school districts and municipalities and leaving many communities struggling to meet both student needs and budget demands.

This year, the Connecticut General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee took an important step forward. The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents (CAPSS) extends sincere thanks to Sen. Catherine A. Osten, Rep. Toni E. Walker, and members of the Appropriations Committee for voting to approve an additional $124 million in each year of the biennium for the Excess Cost Grant. If enacted by the full General Assembly, this funding would, for the first time ever, fully fund the Excess Cost Grant for the 2025 – 2026 school year.

This is not just a budget decision; it’s a moral commitment. Fully funding the Excess Cost Grant ensures that every student, regardless of ability, can access the specialized instruction and services they need. It affirms our values as a state that prioritizes equity, inclusion, and educational opportunity for all.

It also provides tangible relief to local school districts and municipalities. Special education costs are unpredictable and, in some cases, extraordinary. When the state falls short in its obligation to share these costs, districts are forced to reallocate local resources, often at the expense of other programs or services. Full funding allows district leaders to stabilize their budgets, plan more effectively, and maintain the full range of supports their students and communities require.

This has long been a top legislative priority for CAPSS, as well as for Connecticut’s Special Education Task Force. We now urge the full General Assembly to act decisively to approve this investment. Doing so would demonstrate a powerful commitment to students with disabilities, to equity in public education, and to the fiscal health of our towns and cities.

Connecticut has the opportunity to correct a longstanding funding gap and to strengthen the foundation of support for our most vulnerable learners. Let’s seize this moment and fully fund the Excess Cost Grant.

Fran Rabinowitz is the Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.

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Nearly 1 in 5 Connecticut lawmakers are also landlords, far outweighing the number of renters in the General Assembly, according to an analysis by The Connecticut Mirror of the most recent financial disclosure reports.

While the majority of the 187 members of the state’s Legislature are property owners, the CT Mirror’s review shows that 35, or 18.7% of lawmakers, are also landlords. In the United States, closer to 7% of the population are landlords.

There are only 19 legislators who reported not owning any property, meaning they most likely rent. About a third of Connecticut residents are tenants.

The most recently available forms reflect last year’s legislature, although there are only 22 freshman lawmakers this session. Only four of those who left were landlords, and two were renters. It’s not clear which of the freshmen lawmakers are landlords because their financial disclosure reports won’t be available until May. 

The landlord-tenant relationship has been one of the chief concerns of the Housing Committee for the past several legislative sessions. In 2023, adjustments that expanded renter protections accounted for most of the Democrats’ signature housing bill.

The issues have also drawn some of the fiercest debate and most-attended public hearings of the past three legislative sessions, with meetings lasting into early mornings. 

While lawmakers hold mixed opinions about whether and to what degree a legislator’s status as a landlord affects public policy, lawmakers from both parties have cited their experiences as landlords during discussion on bills that would alter the landlord-tenant relationship. 

Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott, a landlord and Housing Committee ranking member, said he considers his experience an asset.

“I’ve got significant amount of experience in this,” Sampson said. “My interest is completely on the side of making good public policy. I’m not picking a winner or loser in this situation. I want all sides to prevail, and that, in my view, is less government intervention.”

Sampson has historically opposed bills that are supported by tenant union members and tenants rights advocates, such as bills to reform eviction law and cap annual rent increases. 

Meanwhile, some lawmakers said their colleagues who are landlords are prioritizing personal income over Connecticut residents.

“I was taken back. I just didn’t think there would be so many landlords voting on issues, voting to put profits over people,” said Housing Committee co-chair Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London. Marx said she asked to be put on the committee because, in her experience as a home health care worker, she’s seen many people living in bad conditions.

“When I voted on housing issues, it’s through their lens. Those are the people that I’m thinking of,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe many of her colleagues are thinking of renters.

Lawmakers rarely mention their experiences as renters during public debate on housing bills, according to longtime members of the Housing Committee and advocates.

Over the past couple of years, lawmakers have considered bills that would cap annual rent increases and another that would largely end no-fault evictions, which haven’t passed.

The evictions bill is back this session and passed the Housing Committee last month. It would end evictions that typically occur at the end of a lease for apartments with five or more units, if the renter has lived at the property for at least a year.

There is disagreement about whether this bill — and its amendments — is an example of pro-tenant or pro-landlord sentiment on the committee.

Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, pointed to the bill as a piece of pro-tenant legislation that has gotten attention over measures he thinks would be beneficial to landlords.

Marx said the fact that the bill also includes a caveat requiring a tenant to live at a property for a year before the protections kick in is an example of legislation that’s been watered down by landlords in the legislature.

Other lawmakers said the portions of the state’s tax code that benefit homeowners and a bill that would make it easier for police to quickly remove people from rental properties if they don’t have a lease are other examples of policies that prioritize property owners over renters. 

“If your financial interest depends on squeezing more rent out of the citizens of our state, then you’re not voting the way I think you should be voting,” Marx said. “Housing is a right. Everybody deserves stable housing, and everybody deserves a home.”

Financial disclosure forms

Lawmakers who own rental properties span across parties and chambers. Fourteen are Republicans, and 21 are Democrats. Nine are in the Senate, and 26 are in the House.

About 40% reported owning more than one property, including vacation homes and timeshares.

CT Mirror’s analysis classifies lawmakers who reported owning multiple properties and collecting rental income as landlords. CT Mirror also included lawmakers who report rental income, but their properties were listed as rentals on sites such as Zillow, and one who is a property manager.

Lawmakers who are involved in the real estate business or those who serve as attorneys for landlords are not classified as landlords in the CT Mirror analysis.

Lawmakers also varied widely in how thoroughly they filled out their financial disclosure forms. Some listed companies that own property but didn’t include the property on their forms, while others listed out each property and the income from that property individually. This could mean that there are rental properties that went unlisted on financial disclosure forms, in which case the CT Mirror’s analysis is an undercount.

Several lawmakers listed multiple properties in Connecticut but didn’t list rental income.

Advocates say the disproportionate number of landlords often means that tenants’ experiences don’t hold as much weight in public debate.

“There are so many conversations I’ve had with legislators where the first frame of reference is, ‘What I’m hearing from landlords,’ or, ‘My friend is a landlord,’ or ‘Myself as a landlord.’ Just anecdotally, that discourse is so often defaulting to a landlord perspective,” said Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union.

State ethics rules require that lawmakers abstain from voting only if the legislation would disproportionately affect their business, compared to others in the industry. But advocates say public policy, particularly in the area of rental properties, is still shaped by the professional and financial goals of members of the General Assembly.

Advocacy groups that represent landlords and several legislators said they don’t think the impact is so obvious. They say state policy is usually more pro-tenant and that housing providers are best equipped as experts to craft policy.

The majority of landlords were also homeowners. For many legislators, it’s been years since they were last renters, and they might not know what it’s like to be a renter in today’s economy, advocates said.

“Much of the work that tenants have to do participating in the process is just providing a basic education of what it’s like to be a tenant,” Melonakos-Harrison said.

Shaped by personal experience

Connecticut has a part-time legislature, meaning the elected officials are typically either retired or hold other jobs because lawmakers only meet for part of the year. Several said they can’t help but be shaped by their experiences, and those experiences help color policy debate.

“I would love to see those folks take a little bit more of a step back and understand it from a holistic perspective,” said Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport. Felipe is one of few renters in the legislature. “But when you have personal experience, that personal experience is going to weigh in, and I think it might have overweighed itself in certain situations, but it’s kind of the name of the game.”

Felipe added that a lawmaker’s salary at a base of $40,000 annually makes it hard for people who work hourly jobs or don’t have passive income to run for office. He added that he hopes lawmakers understand that access to passive income isn’t the typical experience for Connecticut residents.

“You cannot support a family, or let alone yourself, on a legislator’s salary without some other income, whether it’s pension, retirement benefits, or a second job,” he said. “You have to figure out a way to pay the bills.”

Scott said he’d talked to many landlords in the legislature who have said they think the legislation is “going against them.”

Former Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Geoff Luxenberg, D-Manchester, said separating from personal experience often comes down to research. Lawmakers are barraged with sometimes hundreds of bills to consider and often don’t have time to research all the topics, he said.

That means they often lean on their own experiences, he said.

“When you’re lacking expertise in a certain area, as an elected official, I think there’s a tendency to rely on your values, your experiences, your life experiences, to shape how you might view a particular issue,” he said. “And that’s probably where it seeps in the most.” 

Luxenberg reported owning close to 60 properties — the most in the legislature — and draws rental income from most of them. He said his policy views have been shaped by the number of people who come to him desperate for housing.

“It’s like a harrowing front row seat to the most painful part of the housing crisis,” he said.

He added that it can go the other way — that lawmakers shape policy without an understanding of what it’s like to be a landlord. But he thinks it more frequently disadvantages tenants.

“It has been my experience, frequently, that policies that specifically help renters economically face a hurdle in the legislature, and I suspect part of that hurdle is a disconnect between the lived experience of legislators and the lived experience of extremely large number of people in Connecticut who are struggling to pay their rent,” he said.

Legislation proposed

Luxenberg said he’s proposed policy that would offer tax relief to renters, and the attempts have been shut down. Most housing-related tax relief programs for residents aim to encourage homeownership in an effort to help people build wealth.

But researchers have said this approach essentially rewards wealth, offering tax breaks on mortgage interest to people who are able to afford to purchase a home, while people who rent are left without much aid.

“All the benefits in the tax codes at every level of government are for ownership,” he said. “All the things we discuss expanding or increasing are about real estate ownership.”

Lawmakers and advocates also pointed to a bill from Rep. Minnie Gonzalez, D-Hartford, as one driven by her experience as a landlord. In her latest available financial disclosure form, Gonzalez, who is on the Housing Committee, reported that she owns three properties, including her own home.

She earned rental income from one, and her husband earned it from the other. During committee meetings, she’s talked frequently of an experience she described as a “nightmare.”

Gonzalez said she was driving by her rental home one night and saw that the lights were on, even though no one was supposed to be living there. She stopped by and found someone had moved in. 

It’s not clear why the person believed they had a right to be in the property, but Gonzalez says the person was squatting. It took her four hours to resolve it, and she’s since gotten out of the landlord business.

So, this session, she proposed a bill that would allow police to remove squatters from homes without going through a court eviction process.

“They’re not going to grow up, those people, they’re not going to have any responsibility at all,” Gonzalez said during a public hearing. “And it’s very hard to say, maybe very difficult for you to accept. Squatters are illegal, and it should be criminal, and they should be sent to jail.”

But attorneys, other Democrats and tenants rights advocates have raised concerns that the bill would violate due process. Some tenants say they have oral agreements with their landlords but nothing in writing, and it would be hard for police to decide who is telling the truth.

Rafie Podolsky, a longtime housing attorney, said the legal question isn’t whether breaking into a property is illegal but what to do in more complicated situations in which tenants don’t have a lease.

“There are also circumstances where people are living there on oral leases and do not have a single piece of paper that show that they are there with the landlord’s consent,” said Podolsky, during a public hearing. “And if a landlord says to the police, ‘I want this person out. I never agreed to this. Tell them to show you anything in writing,’ they may have nothing to show you, but it doesn’t resolve the question.”

The bill passed the Housing Committee 12-6, with several Democrats voting against it.

In response to the opposition, Gonzalez said in an interview that tenants should make sure they get written leases.

“We have to stop babysitting people,” she said in an interview. “We have to do what we’re supposed to do. Yes, let’s help people, if we have the way to help people, but allowing other people to go out there and take advantage? I don’t think it’s right.”

Eviction reform

Gonzalez also voted against the no-fault eviction bill and said in an interview that she doesn’t believe that there is a housing crisis. She often sees signs advertising apartments for rent or homes for sale, she said.

Data and research have shown that Connecticut lacks tens of thousands of units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest-income renters and that thousands more across different socioeconomic lines are paying more than a third of their income to housing costs. Construction of new homes and availability of houses to purchase have also slowed.

Gonzalez said she thinks the issue isn’t related to supply but to rents that are too high. She favors capping annual rent increases, she said.

Marx said the no-fault eviction bill is an example of one that’s been watered down because of the perspective of landlords in the legislature.

“They watered down the affordable housing measures,” she said. “They watered down the tenants rights bills so that they don’t have any teeth, so that we really pass bills that just don’t do anything for the tenants, and life is just going to get harder for our lower and middle class citizens.”

The bill now includes a provision that says the protections against no-fault evictions don’t kick in until the tenant has lived at the property for a year. Marx says they should begin the moment a renter moves into a property.

The bill has been controversial, even within the Democratic party and among lawmakers who aren’t landlords.

Rep. Larry Butler, D-Waterbury, a former Housing Committee chair and current member, said he doesn’t think it’s a balanced bill that considers the needs of landlords. He voted against it in committee.

“The legislation is like using a hammer instead of using a scalpel, in my opinion,” Butler said. Butler owns his home but didn’t report any rental income or ownership of other properties. He said he was surprised to learn that so many of his colleagues are landlords because he hears about it infrequently.

Republicans have objected to the bill, saying it would violate landlords’ rights and could push people to leave the rental business, taking homes off the market. Sampson said in an interview that he’d heard from friends who are also landlords who say they’re considering giving up their business.

“It’s concerning to me that the Connecticut legislature and the majority seems to think that they have a right to tell people what to do with property that they own, that they worked for and paid for,” Sampson said.

Tenant rights advocates say the concerns are overblown and that the bill is simply an extension of rights that already exist for seniors and people with disabilities. Other states have similar laws and haven’t seen significant harms to their rental market, they say.

Melonakos-Harrison said he thinks the concerns of landlords are considered with more seriousness because lawmakers tend to interact more frequently with landlords than renters.

“People’s perspective on housing is very much shaped through the social networks that they’re in, by people who own property and make money off of property,” he said. “It’s rare to hear any lawmakers speak about the opposite perspective. Renter issues tend to be talked about as more of something that people are not personally familiar with in any meaningful way.” 

The biological mom of the man who was allegedly locked away and starved for two decades slammed his tormentor as the “lowest of the low,” and will only refer to the wicked stepmother as an “it.”

Tracy Vallerand, who lost custody of her son as an infant, reiterated her wish to see accused captor Kimberly Sullivan locked behind bars as she awaits trial, saying she poses too much of a flight risk to have been awarded bail.

“He needs justice, and he needs to know that people are here for him,” Vallerand said of her son in an interview with Fox News.

“Right now, he’s 32 years old, so he has all the say. My God, he’s 32, and he needs to learn to live his life. That is sad on so many different levels.” 

Sullivan was released on $300,000 bond last month in spite of horrifying allegations she locked her stepson in a small room for up to 22 hours per day — leaving him so hungry and thirsty, he’d drink out of the toilet.

Her attorney, Ioannis Kaloidis, filed a motion this week to have the ankle monitor requirement dropped, a move Vallerand vehemently opposed.

“He’s doing a good job for her, but he’s literally at the bottom of the barrel with the clientele that he has. But it’s the lowest of the low that [Kaloidis] aims to be representing, which is pretty sad. I wouldn’t be able to close my eyes at night doing that,” Vallerand said.

Vallerand had been trying to reconnect with her son since he turned 18, but was unable to find any trace of him on the internet, she claimed.

The boy’s father, who was awarded sole custody, was not technologically savvy, so Vallerand optimistically hoped he had taken after his dad in that regard.

“Well, I mean, things that go through your head where you can’t find somebody who’s an adult, especially nowadays on social media, it’s very rare that you would actually find zero carbon footprints,” she told the outlet.

“Did he run away? What else? So many things go through your head. Now, in this case, he didn’t have any death records, so I knew he was still alive.”

Vallerand had no inkling her son had been whisked away from the world and locked inside the squalid home for 20 years, withering away until he was just 68 pounds.

The man — whose identity has not been revealed — was so desperate to escape, he lit his prison room on fire, prompting fire officials to race to the home where they uncovered the horrifying abuse.

The victim spoke out for the first time last week, issuing a statement in which he said he is getting stronger by the day.

“I am a survivor of more than 20 years of captivity and domestic abuse. I was held prisoner in my home from the time I was taken out of the fourth grade at age 11 until two months ago at age 31 when I purposely set the fire that helped set me free,” he wrote, calling himself by the initial “S.”

“I am much better and stronger than I was the day the first responders carried me out of my home. I am beyond grateful for the care I have received since then. To all the health care professionals who have helped and nurtured me, thank you. In addition to all of your care, I appreciated the chance to have my first ever birthday party to celebrate turning 32.”

Sullivan has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and kidnapping.