State Rep Incumbent Maria Horn
MARIA HORN
I’m running for my fourth term in CT’s General Assembly, where I represent the 64th District. I currently serve as the House Chair of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, and am a member of both the Environment and Energy & Technology Committees. Prior to that, I was chair of the Public Safety & Security Committee.
Before being elected to the state legislature in 2018, I worked in the nonprofit sector, government, law, and finance. I have served in all three branches of government, at the local, state, and federal level. I grew up in rural Northeastern Ohio. I earned my BA from Princeton University (1986) and my JD from the University of Chicago (1993).
I ran for office in 2018 because I believe in the power of good government to provide opportunity for all. As a federal prosecutor, my job was to do to justice, without fear or favor, and that has informed all of my work. I’m proud that I have been able to make sure that rural voices are heard and reflected in our budget, over which I have responsibility as Finance Chair, as well as in issues involving our environment, our healthcare, and our education. I hope I can earn the privilege of continuing in that role.
My husband, Tom Quinn, and I live in Salisbury, where we raised our three children, Maude, Abby, and Max, and share our home with our dog, Nelly.
State tax revenues are exceeding expenditures. What policies led to the strengthening of the state's fiscal position and do you support those policies?
A big part of the reason why we have been able to create a robust budget reserve fund, a rainy-day fund, and make substantial payments to our unfunded pension liabilities is because of a system of constraints known as the fiscal guardrails. It means we won't have to raise taxes or cut services at the worst possible time if we hit an economic downturn. It also means our borrowing costs are lower. But I welcome the conversation about whether it might be time for adjustment in some respects.
What do you think is the right balance between debt reduction, tax relief and social spending?
I can't make budget commitments in the abstract. Budgets are holistic documents. We have to continue to pay down our pension debt. But there are some needs that have been starved out by that threshold, and I think we need to look at them holistically.
What is your understanding of the housing shortage in this district and the conflict between proponents and opponents of affordable housing mandates?
I think statewide we have a housing shortage. And that's also true in the Northwest corner. Young people who are living in their parents' basement are having a hard time staying here and building independent lives. That's also true of seniors who maybe want to downsize from a bigger house but stay in the community.
Other parts of Connecticut have developers coming in and wanting to build housing because they can make money. It's not how housing works in the northwest corner. When affordable housing is built, it is by a consortium of nonprofits, the municipality, business interests, the federal help.
I think we can do better in terms of getting money to flow from the state to help us do that. We have to be willing to listen to everybody, but also make the process work with a little bit more alacrity.
Should affordable housing be redefined to include naturally affordable housing as well as deed-restricted affordable housing?
The reason for deed-restricted affordable housing is because you want it to be durable. You want to make sure that it's not just there one moment and then gone the next. Things that are affordable by market standards today might change tomorrow. I definitely think we ought to think about the terms of how long something ought to be affordable. We need to be a little bit flexible, but there does need to be a commitment for some period of time.
Should the legislature be acting more aggressively to address housing availability in the Northwest corner? And if so, what should they do?
I think maybe we can streamline the process without also hitting municipalities over the head.
How can affordable housing work in communities that really don't have any infrastructure for higher density housing to support higher density housing?
Well, I think it does work… We of course don't have public transportation in the Northwest corner. We still need housing. I look at some of the towns in the 64th district that have developed housing right near their sort of town center that fits in with the neighborhood. And no, there's no transportation there. There's no limited public service, but it still works. If we require a structure that is taken out of an urban model with density and then expect small towns to develop that, that's just an admission that our small towns are not going to have appropriate housing for people and we need it.
Electricity bills in Connecticut have skyrocketed. Notably, we've seen charges for “public benefits” added to our bills. Why has that happened and what actions should the legislature take?
People's bills went up big recently and it may happen again, and there are complex reasons for that. It was really hot this summer, and so a lot of people's usage went up. Even though the per unit rate went down, the usage went up.
The other part is the public benefits charge. Part of that public benefits charge, about three-quarters of it, has to do with the Millstone contract, which is our nuclear power facility. Millstone provides about 40 percent of Connecticut's energy and about 15 percent of the energy in New England. In 2017, it was on the brink of failure. We had to enter into a long-term contract with Millstone in order to keep them economically feasible.
Right now that market differential is entirely paid for by Connecticut rate payers, whereas the plant serves New England. When that contract comes up for renewal, we ought to look for ways to make sure to bring other states in who are also relying on that energy. Another issue is the timing. The utilities have a right to get their costs recovered, but it's an open question over what period.
The closing of the Torrington MIRA trash facility will significantly impact disposal costs. Also, a lot of waste is being trucked to Pennsylvania and Ohio landfills, an expensive and unsustainable system. What should Connecticut do to address the trash and recycling problem?
I think it's a problem that's going to require multiple solutions. One of them is increased support for organics diversion. That's about a third of the solid waste stream so that that can help whittle it down.
Another is extended producer responsibility. I think packaging, we have to chip away at that, because the person making the decision of what kind of package to put something in is deciding what's best for them, for their company. I think they also should pay the cost for the long term, dealing with that plastic or whatever kind of packaging they have.
Consumers have a responsibility, too. Some towns have adopted pay-as-you-throw. All of that will not get rid of all our solid waste. There are other waste-to-energy plants in Connecticut. We need to continue to look [at] whether they can expand capacity to take a little bit more.
Should we be ending single stream recycling and sorting out those commodities which may have some resale value as recyclable materials?
It has not worked very well. I think it was based on this assumption that consumers will never do this work, and so we have to let them put it all together. I think we can expect more from people.
Thousands of human-black bear conflicts are reported each year. State resources are focused on public education regarding human-bear interactions. Is education alone adequate for maintaining public safety?
Part of my idea of public education is educating my colleagues in other parts of the state about what this means for us. I have constituents whose dog has been attacked by a bear, bears have broken into their porch, into their kitchen.
Our first piece of legislation banned intentional feeding. Another part of that legislation allowed farmers who make their living producing food that bears also like, to kill bears that are destroying their crops, livestock. That program has had a very slow rollout. In my recent conversations with DEEP, it's just about to go live in terms of farmers being able to get those permits.
I know that there are animal rights groups [who] object to anything that takes the life of an animal. I think they're wrongheaded because I don't think they understand the magnitude of the issue that we face in the Northwest corner. Connecticut is the only state that has a significant black bear population that doesn't have a hunt of any kind. We at least have to have that conversation without people calling each other names.
You mentioned some of the features of the most recently passed bear bill. Was that legislation adequate?
Well, I mean, I can tell you right now it doesn't feel adequate because it's not in force. I'm a little cheesed about that. I've talked to [DEEP] and they promised me that it's just about to be fully enforceable.
The strongest guidance we get from DEEP is to take down bird feeders in season and to use bear proof trash containers. If everyone followed that guidance, wouldn't bears just become more desperate and aggressive?
I've read that when you shut down intentional feeding and other food sources like bird feeders, you do, in the short room, get a tick up of activity because you have bears that are habituated to getting food from those sources and aren't finding it. So yes, in the short run, I think that does happen. From speaking to the bear biologists, bears that get used to eating [human] food sources, learn that habit, they teach it to their cubs. So the argument to have a hunt is that the bears that get taken out are the ones that are dependent on human sourced food. Other bears that aren't, have a robust population in the woods. They really don't want to interact with us.
How can we address the lack of primary care doctors for both adults and children in the Northwest corner?
Rural health care is a challenge throughout the country, but it's a very particular challenge here. Providing rural health care is costly and if you're only making decisions on a cost basis, you're going to suck all the services out of the rural area.
Other rural areas have made it work with a combination of a healthcare system and an FQHC, a federally qualified health center, that can be a little bit more nimble. I did get the funding for an FQHC, which just recently opened in Canaan.
They've been able to recruit physicians who don't want to work for a big corporation, and healthcare workers who are committed to the mission of serving their community.
In 2024, the Senate blocked a bill to support local news outlets by directing a portion of state advertising to locally-owned media. Is a decline in local news outlets a problem?
Lots of good bills pass the house and get killed in the Senate. I will say, sort of on a kind of counterintuitive bright note, in the northwest corner we're having a rebirth of small newspapers, and you yourself are one of them. There's one in Kent. The Lakeville Journal has just reinvented itself as a non-profit. So, I'm hopeful here. I think the revert is just amazing.
