As I conclude my service as Chairman of the Greenwich Republican Town Committee, I do so with gratitude for the trust placed in me and with a concern that transcends party. Greenwich has long occupied a distinctive place in Connecticut’s civic life. It has been regarded — and more importantly, has conducted itself — as a town governed by deliberation rather than impulse, by institutional memory rather than ideological fashion. That character did not arise by accident. It was formed by generations who understood that self-government requires restraint, consistency, and seriousness.
The central question before us is whether that character will endure.
The Republican Town Committee has long sought to remain anchored in that municipal tradition. Our emphasis in what was a long tradition of governing Greenwich has been local: balanced budgets, predictable taxation, professional administration, public safety, and zoning decisions made by those who live with their consequences.
We are a local committee concerned with a local polity where disagreements are managed with civility. When we have fallen short of that standard, we have worked hard to correct our course — because self-government begins with self-scrutiny. Fortunately, we have a First Selectman in Fred Camillo who works diligently to preserve this local perspective and to keep Greenwich focused on governing rather than posturing.
Municipal government is not an ideological proving ground. It is where contracts are negotiated, budgets balanced, roads repaired, and schools sustained. It is where arithmetic disciplines ambition. When local politics begins to mirror national partisan theater, the cost is not abstract. It is borne in diminished local authority and a coarsened civic culture.
Nowhere is this tension more evident than in zoning and housing policy. Greenwich has historically defended local control, calibrating development to infrastructure capacity, environmental constraints, and neighborhood character. That calibration reflects lived knowledge — of traffic flow, classroom capacity, water systems, and tax burdens. These are the daily realities of governance. Such judgments cannot responsibly be centralized in Hartford without weakening accountability to the people most affected.
In 2024, House Bill 5390 — an anti-local housing proposal — would have shifted zoning authority. During her tenure as a State Representative, Selectman Rachel Khanna voted in favor of that legislation, which with her support passed the House. It was halted through the determined efforts of State Senator Ryan Fazio—who argued it undermined local control. As similar proposals reemerge and pass under the weight of a veto-proof supermajority, voters are entitled to examine consistency. Positions on questions as foundational as local control should not f luctuate with electoral winds.
All three Democratic members of our state delegation have voted for or advanced legislation that weakens municipal authority. None has mounted sustained procedural resistance when such measures were viable. Opposition offered only when outcomes are assured invites skepticism. Local control cannot be defended episodically. It requires vigilance when legislation is being born and when opposition might have real effects.
This reflects a broader shift. The Greenwich Democratic Town Committee has increasingly aligned itself with the tone and ambitions of the national and state-wide progressive movement. The shift is evident in policy commitments that subordinate municipal judgment to statewide mandates and in rhetoric that casts disagreement in moral absolutes. That approach may energize a base. It does not strengthen a town.
Greenwich has not flourished through agitation. Its vitality has rested on institutional steadiness and a shared understanding that public office is stewardship, not spectacle. Even sharp disagreement was bounded by respect for the town itself as the primary constituency.
Greenwich residents expect competence and candor. They expect their officials to safeguard both the town’s balance sheet and its authority to govern itself. They expect civility — because in a community of shared institutions, politics that degenerates into vilification diminishes the whole.
The future of Greenwich will not hinge on one chairman or one committee. It will depend on whether we insist that local government remain disciplined, measured, and rooted in the particular interests of this town rather than in the shifting cataclysms of national issues—on either side.
Greenwich deserves leadership commensurate with its inheritance: thoughtful, restrained, and serious. If we preserve that standard, we preserve more than electoral advantage. We preserve the governing character of the town itself.
Michael Hahn
