Connecticut legislature overhauls towing laws to reduce 'predatory towing'

Summary

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. The Connecticut Senate on Friday overwhelmingly passed the most significant reform to the state’s towing policies in decades, a measure lawmakers said would help protect drivers from predatory towing. House Bill 7162 overhauls the state’s century-old towing statutes and comes in response to an investigation by the Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica that showed how state towing laws have come to favor tow companies at the expense of drivers. It takes several steps to make it harder to tow vehicles from private property and easier for drivers to retrieve their vehicles after a tow. The bill, which passed the House of Representatives last week with wide bipartisan support and little debate, sailed through the Senate on a 33-3 vote. “It’s reform that ensures transparency, it ensures fairness and accountability, but does all of this without undercutting the essential work that ethical and professional tow operators do each and every day for us, keeping our roads safe and our properties accessible,” said Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford. “We’ve learned over the years, and particularly over the last year due to some investigative reporting, of some particularly egregious circumstances.” A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said the governor plans to sign the bill into law. Republican Sen. Tony Hwang, ranking member of the Transportation Committee, also spoke in favor of the bill. The bill got about a half hour of debate ahead of passage, and there were no comments in opposition. Hwang, who represents Fairfield, said the bill strikes the right balance between the interests of towers and consumers. “I want to acknowledge that our press had an important part to bring out transparency and some of the bad actions, and I think in this bill we address some of those issues,”...