Tackling Affordability and Providing Tax Relief
The state’s financial footing is improving, but affordability and the rising costs of utilities, healthcare, housing, and childcare remain top concerns among voters throughout the state and the 28th State Senate District. If elected, Rob will use his local and state government experience to: • Pass budgets that keep taxes stable and predictable, continue to pay down pension liabilities, and fund key community projects throughout Bethel, Easton, Fairfield, and Newtown. • Advocate for strategic bonding and aid to offset municipal expenditures and keep our local taxes lower. • Work to implement a sustainable longer-term funding plan for the programs that were previously funded by ARPA funds in years past, such as mental health and housing programs and higher education. • Support the expansion of programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), property tax credits, and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). • Fight for tax cuts for seniors on a fixed income, as well as middle class and young families. • Explore potentially transforming unused existing structures to add to the housing stock, which will help to ease the property tax burden on countless families. • Advocate for state grants for housing and brownfield remediation for transit-oriented housing and economic development.
Protecting the Environment and Combating Climate Change
Bethel, Easton, Fairfield, and Newtown are home to some of the state’s most beautiful parks, beaches, farms, and walking trails. Rob will be a staunch advocate for protecting the district’s greatest environmental assets while working to combat the growing impact from climate change. Rob will: • Fight to limit carbon pollution by incentivizing and encouraging renewables. • Advocate for greater environmental justice measures to reduce the pollution in densely populated areas near highways. • Partner with our land trusts to fund grants to preserve swathes of land to better maintain and protect our environment and open spaces. • Reduce utility costs or prevent unpredictable and unaffordable spikes for ratepayers through municipal or community aggregation.
Investing in Connecticut’s Transportation Infrastructure
Connecticut’s economy and its investment in its transportation infrastructure are inextricably linked, including our mass transit system. If our economy is to thrive, we must address the traffic on our major highways, aging bridges, and slower train times. Rob will: • Ensure we properly maintain our railways, provide reliable and affordable train service with amenities like WiFi, and express trains from New York to Hartford that actually align with commuting times and work schedules. • Deliver additional funding for projects to improve our bridges, which will not only help reduce travel times and congestion but ensure our infrastructure can support high-speed trains. • Deploy the Build Back Better funds to get shovels in the ground and rebuild and enhance our highway system to make our roads safer and less congested.
Investing in our Workforce by Cultivating Talent
At a time when critical industries are facing mass shortages, we must invest in a strong workforce that attracts and trains the next generation of teachers, healthcare and public safety professionals, and mental health workers and manufacturers by working with public and private sector leaders to identify ways to address the talent gap. Rob will: • Estabish private-public partnerships between Connecticut’s institutions of higher education and the private sector to ensure more students gain on-the-job experience which will allow them to fill needed jobs immediately upon graduating. • Work closely with Connecticut’s biggest employers like Electric Boat and Sikorsky to develop programs to retrain our unemployed residents and get folks back to work with new skills and new career opportunities. • Invest in vocational schools and teachers to help train our next generation of skilled workers here in Connecticut.
Investing in Education - From Early Childhood to Higher Education and Vocational Schools
Connecticut is home to some of the most renowned child care programs, K-12 schools, and colleges and universities. Investing in education — from early childhood to higher education and vocational programs — will bring a significant return on investment and attract and retain more families to our state. Rob will: • Tackle both the cost and scarcity of childcare by supporting initiatives that help attract more teachers to the early childcare profession, providing business owners with economic benefits or incentives to open a childcare center, and working with local municipalities to provide affordable buildings and spaces for childcare programs. • Expand funding and eligibility for programs like the Office of Early Childhood’s Care4Kids, which helps to subsidize the cost of childcare for those who need it. • Incentivize employers to provide employer-sponsored dependent care accounts. • Fight to fully fund our educational cost-sharing (ECS) grants and remove some of the burdensome mandates that make it more difficult for teachers to teach our children. • Strengthen education and employment pathways, further expand Connecticut’s free-tuition program, and bolster partnerships between the private sector and our institutions of higher education.
Supporting First Responders and Strengthening Gun Safety Laws
From investing in our police, firefighters, and first responders, to helping crack down on property crimes like car theft, Rob has a plan to improve the public safety conditions of the district and make our community feel safer in the process. When elected, Rob will: • Work to strengthen our gun safety laws and make Connecticut a national leader on reducing gun violence through safety reforms and intervention programs. • Provide funding to retain, train, and recruit state and municipal police and firefighters as well as protecting their healthcare and all the resources they need when faced with trauma or injury. • Work with police to find ways to reduce property crimes such as car theft. • Support funding for Connecticut’s Commission on Community Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention.
Lowering Costs for Connecticut's Seniors
Being able to afford to stay and retire in our communities is an ongoing struggle that far too many families face. Connecticut’s elderly residents deserve to retire with dignity and to know that retiring doesn’t mean leaving their home or leaving their neighborhood. To fix this challenge we are going to need leadership that understands this struggle and is ready to do something about it. From day one, Rob will: • Work to ensure our seniors can afford to age in their homes, have access to better services, and are given the transportation access they need to stay connected. • Find ways to lower the cost of prescription drug prices. • Invest in job training that boosts the healthcare workforce needed to take care of our aging population.
Making Healthcare More Affordable and Accessible
Far too many people in our state deal with out of control healthcare bills and other associated costs that cripple them financially. This cannot continue. If we want to grow our middle-class here in Connecticut, it starts with providing more affordable options for our residents and families. In Hartford, Rob will: • Help to lower the cost of health coverage for small businesses and their employees and improve the quality of coverage they receive through self-funded health benefit plans (multiple employer welfare arrangements, or MEWAs) for employees. • Pass legislation to drive down the costs of prescription drugs and hold pharmaceutical companies accountable. • Support robustly regulated self-funded health benefit arrangements.
Strengthening Access to Women’s Healthcare
At a time when the U.S. Supreme Court and states across the country seek to roll back decades of progress on core protections for women, we need to elect a leader who will fight for women’s reproductive freedoms and smart economic policies that support women and their families. When women succeed, we all succeed. Rob will: • Protect and expand women’s healthcare, access to reproductive care - including abortions or IVF, cancer screenings and more. • Stand up, develop, and strengthen policies such as paid family leave, equal pay, and access to childcare. • Address other inequities present in maternal healthcare such as infant mortality rates.
Protecting our Democracy and Safeguarding Election Integrity
Our democracy has reached an inflection point as states across the nation have taken steps to make it harder for people to cast their votes. It is critical that every voter has the chance to make their voice heard and that we continue to protect our fundamental right to vote and safeguard election integrity. Rob will: • Work with both sides of the aisle in the legislature to pass policies that protect and expand access to voting, including making Election Day a state holiday. • Strengthen election security and continue to protect against voter suppression. • Work to ensure that our elections are free and fair.