SALISBURY — For state Rep. Maria Horn, the last two years have been constant and unexpected change. This year, as she runs for her second term serving the 64th House District, she’s looking forward to continuing her work for the people she serves.
“There were so many unexpected things that happened, particularly this year,” she said. “We knew we were going to be facing financial challenges, but we didn’t have COVID-19. So this year, it was important for me to take a steady hand, and look toward the future.”
Horn, an attorney, and her husband, retired real estate investor Tom Quinn, have three grown children: Abby, 21, a junior at Bates College; Max 19, a freshman at the University of Chicago; and Maude, 23, who lives in Minneapolis, Minn.
Her campaign, she said, still focuses on careful spending, health care and legislation. The state’s rainy day fund recently hit a high balance — more than $3 billion — which Horn views as an accomplishment and something that will help Connecticut as it recovers from the effects of the response to the pandemic on the economy and employment. Horn sits on the state’s Judiciary, Environment and Appropriations committees.
“We’re going to have a tough road, with tough decisions,” she said. “We’ve been very lucky that our predictions for the fiscal health of the state have been good — but we’ve got bad news ahead, too. We have large deficits looming over us in 2021.”
A big concern for the state, she said, is health care. “We’re seeing the unraveling, at the federal level, of health care systems,” she said, referring to President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. “Public health really came into the forefront during the pandemic,” she said.
“Putting things in place to curb costs for residents, for example, is something we need to continue,” she said. “Insulin costs, for example, have been controlled. The cost of insulin by the pharmaceutical industry is a texbook story of greed, and we pushed back with a good bill, but there’s more to be done.
“We also passed a telehealth bill,” Horn added. “Telehealth (using video or telephones to replace in-person medical care visits) has been huge during the pandemic, and in our region, it’s even more important.”
Horn is also focused on election reform. It started this year because of the pandemic, with absentee ballots. “In 2019 we took the first step toward creating early voting in Connecticut. The tradition of having a whole election on a single Tuesday in November is a pretty archaic notion,” she said. “Connecticut has a very traditional mode when it comes to elections, and it’s hard to change that. But we took a step to put early voting on the ballot, and that’s important in the pandemic. … People don’t want to go into a crowded room because they feel it puts them at risk.”
She credited Secretary of the State Denise Merrill with what she hopes will be a successful first round in a national election, using the absentee ballot more than ever before. “I was very interested in the mechanics of making this work,” Horn said. “The town clerks have had to set up systems that work to protect everybody, and it’s been complicated.”
Looking ahead, Horn has set new goals for herself.
“One of the things I was looking forward to working on in 2020, before the pandemic, was our waste management and recovery systems,” she said. “It’s really important — MIRA (Materials Innovation Recycling Authority), the waste management system that most towns in my district and the region use, needs $350 million of an investment to make it work, going forward, and the governor is not willing to provide them with that money. We need to come up with new waste management systems; better composting, for example. A huge percentage of our waste is compostable, and if we can get people to participate in that, it would make a difference.
“We also need to update the state’s bottle bill,” Horn said. “It’s from the 1970s and our reimbursement rate is extremely low.”
Another goal is better connectivity to the northwest corner, where digital access and service is difficult. “We have real challenges up here,” she said. “We are underconnected to the internet in our area. The harm that brings to our communities is worse that ever.
“We have a lot of people who want to move here and stay here, but they can’t connect to their jobs at other locations if they’re working from home. If we want them to stay here and raise their kids here, to become part of the community, we need to improve that access,” she said.
She also wants to find a way to “align with Eversource to make them accountable,” she said, adding that she was angered by the late summer storm that left thousands of homes without power for days.
Horn hopes everyone in the country will find a way to vote on Nov. 3. “We’re putting out a lot of information about absentee ballots, where to use the dropbox at town hall, things like that,” she said. “There’s nothing more important to me than making sure everyone gets to vote, safely and securely.”
