Advocacy Alert – Legislative Session Ends on Wednesday!

Who to call

Your own state legislators: Enter your address here and find your legislators.

Say that you are a constituent. They get lots of calls, but they need to pay attention to the people in their district who will elect them — or vote them out — in November.

You can also call

Senate Leadership

• Martin Looney: 860-240-0375
• Bob Duff: 203-840-133 or 860-240-0414

House Leadership

• 860-240-8585 – Ask for Speaker Matt Ritter and call again and ask for Majority Leader Jason Rojas.

What to Advocate For

To Support in the Senate

SB 191, Food Scrap Diversion. This bill would require institutions that serve and distribute food (like groceries and restaurants) to have a plan for donating excess food to organizations that rescue food and give it to people who need it. Lori Martin of Haven’s Harvest led a workshop on food rescue at our Winter Conference. It would also require more food processors and other generators of food scraps to compost, and would require towns to plan for diverting food scraps for compost. Advocate to keep this bill strong and bring it to the floor.

SB 292. PFAS. This bill would ban the sale of a wide range of consumer goods with these “Forever Chemicals” that cause cancer and birth defects. It would also ban the sale of soil amendments with sewage sludge (aka “biosolids”), which are often contaminated with PFAS. Anne Hulick of CT Clean Water Action gave a workshop on PFAS at our Winter Conference.  Advocate to keep this bill strong and bring it to the floor.

HB 5352. Expanding Solar Projects. This bill, which has just passed the House, would allow for expansion of caps on non-residential solar projects, which have been severely limiting the ability of farmers, among others, to install solar to produce energy to benefit their farming operations. It would also simplify the process for putting up solar canopies (over parking lots, walkways, driveways, etc.) Advocate for a vote in the Senate.

To Support in the House

HB 5228. Purchase of Lands at Agricultural Value. This is the top priority for the New CT Farmers Alliance and the Working Lands Alliance. As part of the Farmland Preservation program, it would create the opportunity for farmers preserving their land to opt in to a provision that would require the land to be sold to a qualified farmer — a farmer who actually gets most of their income from farming. As a result, wealthy people who get most of their income elsewhere could not bid up the price of farmland, making it more affordable for farmers. Advocate for this bill to come to the House with a strong definition of a farmer purchaser.

Thank you for advocating for these priority bills!