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I'm Mark Sudall. Welcome back to Power and Politics. Here now is the Connecticut Republican House minority leader, State Representative Vincent Candelora. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. Uh, so first of all, let's, uh, talk about, uh, we got a lot to talk about here with, uh, Wednesday and the governor's address and the start of the legislative session. In the governor's address, he talked about this $200 tax rebate. Can you comment on that? Yes, I think it fell a little bit flat. You know, we're generally concerned that there's not systemic change. If we're going to do tax rebates, we really should build into the budget and do structural tax changes. Otherwise it looks gimmicky and I think it frustrates the residents because they understand a one time $200 check isn't gonna go very far. No, well, we know too this is an election year for, for everybody, right? So, uh, it was interesting to me though in talking to, um, state senator Ryan Fazio that he wanted to propose something a little bit different than that. Yeah, I mean, I think Republicans have different proposals. We, we are looking at. A property tax credit, you know, one of our concerns is we're seeing education being funded through the local property taxes more and more, and education is only getting more expensive. The state share hasn't kept up with inflation, so we would like to really take a look at education dollars, increase the state share to help alleviate the property tax burden, but also private property tax credit to the residents so they could see some offset when it comes to homeownership. We talk about affordability. It really, it's your second biggest payment is your tax bill on your house, and we gotta try to reduce that. So the governor proposes a $28.7 billion dollar budget. Um, how do we make Connecticut more affordable? It's a matter of prioritizing, you know, we really have to take a look at this budget and make some of the hard decisions. We, we have got to, uh, you know, fund healthcare, but in particular we've got to focus on property tax relief. Um, we have additional $3 billion in this budget that is being spent from the volatility cap surpluses. Those guard rails that we all brag about have worked very well for government, but they're not working for the residents of Connecticut. We need to take that money and rather than grow government, we need to put it toward tax relief, and it could be done. It just needs to be a priority. Uh, I was there for the, the governor's address. Um, I, I noticed that you and, uh. Senator Harding seemed to applaud some of what the governor said about schools, uh, no phones in schools, and about the, the, the free school lunches. Yeah, I think, you know, the school lunch issue, uh, I think universal is going to be a difficult one to implement only because we gotta make sure that the kids that need it are getting it. You know, breakfast and lunch are important for kids. My wife is in a school system. Kids will go to school hungry at times. We need to make sure there's an avenue to feed those children, and I think right now there is. Um, Universal is a little bit more expensive to do, um, so I think we need to really take a look and see how to make the system work and keep it efficient. Definitely having kids, we've seen the impact of cell phone use and you know the digital world now on our children. I think it's appropriate in the classroom for learning. We really need to limit children's use of screen time. So I'm all for limiting, uh, cell phones in schools. What are some of the other issues that will come up in this legislative session? Yeah, I think we're going to be talking about hospitals right now. There's the hospital tax that was very controversial. It was put in 15 years ago. Most states are doing it now. Frankly, it's a little bit of a gimmick where we're basically charging the federal government a tax through healthcare and they're paying it to us, so. Hospitals, healthcare ends up benefiting from this tax. It needs to be redone because the federal government, it expired actually this year, so we've got to get that tax done. There's also going to be a lot of talk about certainly affordability in this year's budget of how we bring down electric costs. That is something that we cannot punt. There's a lot of difficult decisions. It can be done. We can reduce the public benefit charge, if not eliminate all the charges. We've got to limit some of those programs. It's become a dumping ground for all sorts of policies, and we've never paid attention to that price tag and how much it's costing. We've got to start paying attention to what these programs are costing and make it more reasonable. Some state Republicans have tried to. I guess separate themselves from the president and what's coming out of Washington. What's your reaction to some of the things that are coming out of Washington? Yes, I think the biggest issue for Washington is, you know, first, we don't do well when there's negative headwinds at the federal level for Republicans. It tends to trickle down on the ballot, and our roles are very different than the federal government. One of my criticisms that I've seen coming out of this federal government is sort of the uncertainty and chaos that's created. We saw a couple of weeks ago public health cuts that were done. We couldn't understand them. Within 24 hours those cuts were reversed. That type of behavior does not work well. I think that the president is starting to get that message looking at the polling and where these headwinds are coming in that I'm hoping that they bring more certainty to the process because that's that's what you need. That doesn't help the economy when people are nervous. And so that's going to be a challenge, but the federal headwinds are always going to impact Connecticut Republicans unfortunately. And because of that, are you concerned as this is an election year for so many, is that going to affect your reelection? Yes, I am concerned right now the Democrats have a supermajority in Connecticut. People have enjoyed a good budget, but the foundation of that budget came out of a 2017 bipartisan agreement where we were almost tied in the House. A lot of those good policies have been eroded. So when I talk about the fiscal guardrails, the problem is that this budget has relied on $3 billion of revenue that's volatile, that we have said don't budget, put it into the pensions, put it into the rainy day fund, but it's too volatile to build it into your budget. The Democrats have now built that into their budget. We've seen 6% increases year over year. If the stock market has any kind of a hiccup, we could see our budget collapse and fall into deficit very quickly. So I'm concerned we don't have enough sort of friction up in Hartford to push back on those bad policies. Danny, thank you so much for the time. Thank you. Next, Fairfield's first selectperson race has been decided. Stay with us.

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Incumbent Christine Vitale claims victory in the Fairfield First Selectpersons special election. She will now remain in office until the end of the term. News 12 Connecticut's Greg Thompson spoke with Vitale about what the party will continue to do. The last time that Fairfield had an election for first select person, it was decided by less than 40 votes. Well, it seems like a little bit of a different story here with the Fairfield Democratic Town Committee calling this a political landslide. Incumbent Christine Vitale declaring victory in the special election over state Senator Tony Wong to finish out the term of Bill Gerber, who passed away over the summer because of a brain tumor. Now Vitale had been his running mate and was appointed to the position after that. She would have been able to finish out the term, but Wong was able to get enough signatures to force the special election. In her victory speech, Vitale said. was at a crossroads and chose the direction of moving forward here, saying she was honored to be able to finish the work that she and Gerber started. We ran together. We ran on the slogan Better Together, and I carry that thought that we're just better as a community when we listen to all voices and the energy of just a community coming together to amplify, you know, voices of hope. Um, you know, accessibility and keeping fair filming welcoming, so Bill is definitely with us here tonight. Of course there will be another election for first select Person in 2027. Vitali says she hasn't even started thinking about that yet. For now, it's back to work, although there will be a little trip first to visit some family down in Florida. For now, that is the latest here in Fairfield, Greg Thompson, News 12, Connecticut. And we also heard from State Senator Tony Wong after he conceded the race. Wong telling News 12 he called Vitale to congratulate her on the victory. After the loss, he gave an emotional speech thanking everybody who worked on his behalf, and he called for unity in the community. We will not retreat into bitterness. We will make a recommitment to this community and for those that are feeling disappointed, take heart. Your voice mattered and we did it the right way. We did it with positive. We did it with compassion and passion. Wong saying he will go on supporting the policies and ideas that will protect the town and keep his neighbors safe. Well, that's all our time. I'm Mark Sudall. Thanks for watching.

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Gov. Ned Lamont and Connecticut Republican House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora join the show this week. 

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