HARTFORD – The office that runs the State Capitol complex would contract with a nonprofit agency to study Connecticut’s unidentified aerial phenomena under legislation that has passed in a bipartisan vote of a key legislative committee.
A redrafted version of the bill approved Wednesday in the budget-writing Appropriations Committee removed the duty of looking into unidentified flying objects from the University of Connecticut, as originally proposed. Instead, it would put the search for an appropriate contractor to handle the UFO investigation with the General Assembly’s nonpartisan Office of Legislative Management.
Although there was some chuckling among the 53 committee members about the legislation, which next heads to the House of Representatives, the bill would set a July 1, 2027, deadline for the contractor to complete research and report findings on UFOs to the legislature.
State Rep. Tammy Nuccio of Vernon, a ranking Republican on the panel who lives in a rural area, said that when neighbors spot unexplained things flying around, they call her.
“I understand that this bill has brought levity to the Appropriations Committee, and I have gone back and forth on the bill myself,” Nuccio said, recalling that in recent years, multiple sightings of UFOs later turned out to be privately owned drones.
“There was a lot of concern about drones near military bases,” Nuccio said. “There was a lot of concern about drones near government facilities, and nobody had any explanations.”
In Stafford, residents were particularly interested and even “freaked-out” by the aerial lights, she said.
“It’s ‘aliens are coming’ et cetera et cetera,” she said during the brief committee discussion. “I myself got to the point of, ‘What are these and why does nobody know what they are? Why does nobody know who is flying these? Are they your neighbor?’”
Nuccio also pointed out that New Jersey has launched research into the issue.
“We should, when we see lights in the sky, have some ability to say what’s going on,” she said. “I want to be able to tell the people … when they see something in the sky, that, ‘Hey, we’re looking into it.’”
State Rep. Joe Hoxha, R-Bristol, another proponent of the bill, said he is happy it moved forward.
“This isn’t necessarily about aliens or little green men or the sort of content in various movies like ‘Independence Day’,” Hoxha said. “This is exactly about the sort of things that Rep. Nuccio was describing.”
State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, the committee co-chair, said she “really had a lot of fun” with the bill.
“All due respect to everybody’s opinion on this bill, I really like this bill,” Osten said.
The legislation was originally drafted to include help with the project from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the state Military Department and the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
In written testimony for an earlier public hearing on the bill, DESPP Commissioner Ronnell Higgings asked that references to his agency be deleted from the eventual legislation because “much of the data maintained by DESPP is sensitive and restricted to law enforcement or other authorized entities due to public safety and national security considerations.”
This article originally published at UFOs or drones? Connecticut lawmakers push for answers on mysterious lights.