Editorial: Hartford’s Mandate Mill

Connecticut’s habit of legislating first and thinking later has again revealed its cost. Within days of the General Assembly’s passage of HB8002 — a sweeping assertion of bureaucratic housing supervision over 169 municipalities — the state’s utilities regulator issued a decision that exposes a broader pattern: Hartford creates problems faster than towns can clean them up. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority’s unanimous rejection of the proposed sale of Aquarion Water Company was a rebuke not only to the transaction but to the improvised legislative maneuvering that enabled it.

PURA found that the legislative structure forced upon towns produced a governance scheme riddled with incompatible fiduciary duties, an erosion of local representation, an underpowered consumer-advocacy system