Passed a bipartisan budget with historic tax cuts and strategic investments, while adhering to state’s fiscal guardrails, including:

• The largest personal income tax cut in CT history, including:

o Cutting marginal income tax rates

o Increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit

o Protecting more retirement income from taxation

• More than $240 million invested in public education:

o stabilizing state colleges and universities,

o expanding debt-free community college,

o fully funding K-12 schools and local boards of education, and

o increasing scholarships and student debt relief

• Investments in safety net services, including Temporary Family Assistance, increasing Husky C eligibility, funding community action agencies for residents facing crisis, supporting the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and increasing Medicaid rate reimbursements for providers and specialists

• More than $30 million to better serve intellectually or developmentally disabled individuals

Healthcare and Reproductive Rights

• Tackled health care costs by limiting hospital fees, establishing a drug discount card program, allowing CT to join with other states to increase prescription drug purchasing power and lower costs, and strengthening the Office of Health Strategy’s Certificate of Need Program regulating hospital systems.

• Protected reproductive health care by removing barriers to access emergency contraception and helping shield health care providers from being targeted by other states.

• Focused resources to prevent and treat opioid abuse by requiring DMHAS to create a pilot program establishing harm reduction centers.

Environmental Initiatives

• Improved transparency and established standards for the removal of hazardous trees at state parks to prevent unsupported and abrupt clear-cutting of trees such as took place at Housatonic Meadows State Park in 2021.

• Allowed for better management of the population of black bears by banning intentional feeding and allowing farmers experiencing damage to crops or livestock to get a permit from DEEP to neutralize black bears or other nuisance wildlife, and enabling you to defend yourself, your family, and your pets from an attack by a black bear.

• Responded to the continuing municipal solid waste crisis with new funding for facilities and mandatory food scrap diversion at colleges, hospitals, and nursing homes.

• Allowed permits for factories, waste plants, and other polluters to be denied or have conditions on them when they are proposed in locations that have historically dealt with high levels of pollution.

Strengthening the Economy and the State’s budget resources

• $650 million in tax relief:

  • Created child tax credit

  • Cut property taxes for retirees

  • Cut the car tax

  • Extended the gas tax cut

  • Ended pension & annuity tax

• Lowered business tax rate for unemployment insurance

• Established JobsCT program, helping job-creating companies in target industries earn rebates against insurance premiums and state taxes

Healthcare & Reproductive Rights

• Secured $3 million in bond funding to construct a new Federally Qualified Health Center in North Canaan, that will provide primary care and mental health services to the region regardless of ability to pay.

• Expanded eligibility to perform abortion care to include advanced nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and physician assistants, and blocked the ability of anti-choice states to target CT patients, doctors, nurses, and advocates.

• Strengthened the Certificate of Need process that regulates healthcare systems, limiting their ability to terminate services, and helping increase access to healthcare facilities throughout the state;

• Established healthcare benchmarking, collecting data on what we spend on healthcare for the first time. This data will help create a road map to help lower healthcare cost growth.

• Made a significant investment in our childrens’ mental health, by increasing funding for infant and toddler care, increasing pay for childcare workers, assisting local childcare facilities with capital costs, providing grants to local schools to hire support staff (including in the areas of mental health such as social workers, psychologists, and counselors), funded expansions of school-based health centers, and expanded a new 24/7 emergency mental health response hotline.

Investments in early childhood infrastructure

• Increased funding for infant and toddler care

• Increased pay to childcare workers

• Assisted local childcare facilities with renovation costs

• Approved state tax credit for childcare

Environmental Initiatives

• Passed the Connecticut Clean Air Act, speeding up the timeline for the electrification of the state fleet of vehicles, making it easier for renters and condo owners to install electric chargers, exempting electric charging stations from property tax assessments, and incentivizing school districts to use electric school buses. We set a goal of reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions from electricity supplied to you by 2040, and expanded financing to develop zero-emission vehicle infrastructure, build more solar power and fuel cells, and reinforce our electric grid.

• Invested in sustainable farming and open space, by making climate-smart farming and forestry practices more financially accessible, and preserving approximately 1,900 acres of land this year.

Public safety initiatives

• Responded to juvenile crime, auto thefts, and pandemic-related crime by improving law enforcement access to relevant information and training, and creating job training and engagement opportunities for young adults.

• Created Hate Crimes Investigation Unit, streamlining data collection, reporting, and information sharing.

• Extended employment protections to police officers who seek and receive mental health care services.

• Funded training and resources for law enforcement to address community mental health crises.

• Voting rights

  • Voters will get to decide in 2022 if we should have early, in-person voting

  • Voters will get to decide in 2024 if every registered voter in CT should be able to vote by absentee ballot

  • Voters are guaranteed two hours off from work to vote in state and federal elections

  • Paved the way for permanent installation of drop boxes for absentee ballots

  • Protected voters’ personal information

• Strengthening the economy and the state’s budget resources

  • Passed a strong, bipartisan two-year budget that invests in our economy, including aid to our towns; tax credits for working families; access to quality, affordable healthcare & childcare; expanded workforce development support and increased support to nonprofit health and human service providers. This budget has no increases in income or sales tax rates.

  • Legalized sports betting and online gaming, including strong consumer protections

  • Legalized adult use of cannabis, balancing health, treatment, public safety, and equity. Erased past marijuana convictions, and will invest majority of proceeds to advancing equity and substance abuse treatment

• Increasing access to broadband

  • Secured grants to cities and towns for broadband projects

  • Set up process to assess state-wide access to the internet

  • Required internet providers to cover part of the state’s costs

• Protecting the environment

  • Raised bottle deposits to 10 cents, applied deposits to more products and provided more money to towns and redemption centers to ensure these products don’t wind up as litter or in a landfill

  • Helped approve more anaerobic digesters on farms to address food waste and stormwater runoff

  • Regulated the harmful chemical PFAS

  • Expanded the CT Green Bank to give towns increased ability to invest in green infrastructure

• Strengthened our economy by raising the minimum wage and provided for paid family medical leave

• Ensured health insurers treated mental health in parity with physical health, and protected those with pre-existing conditions

• Protected Community Investment Act Funds, including significant support for dairy farms

• Expanded Medicaid coverage

• Banned single-use plastic bags

• Strengthened safe gun storage laws and banned ghost guns

• Supported renewable energy and air-quality monitoring for towns at risk from the Cricket Valley plant in New York

• Raised the age of purchase for tobacco and vaping products to 21

I have forged strong relationships with Connecticut’s legislative leadership and government officials in Hartford over these past three years. These connections have enabled me to work effectively to help our region’s residents and businesses negotiate the complexities involved in applying for unemployment insurance and Small Business Administration loans during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to ensure residents have access to testing and vaccines in parity with other areas of the state. I have focused the state’s attention on particular issues in our district, especially involving our hospitals, nursing homes, schools, environmental concerns, and our need for digital infrastructure.

To meet the challenges ahead, it will be more important than ever that the Northwest Corner have a prominent seat at the table as our state forges a new future. It will require full-time effort, and, if re-elected, I pledge to re-commit all of my time and energy working for my constituents here in our communities.