Senator Looney: Private Equity Has No Place in Public Safety

Fire departments across Connecticut are stripping safety equipment from new trucks and stretching aging engines years past schedule because a consolidated fire apparatus industry has pushed costs and wait times to record highs, as CT Insider reported this week. Today, Senate President Martin Looney (D-New Haven) denounced the private equity consolidation driving the crisis and argued that such firms should have no role in any industry that determines public health or public safety.

Three companies, REV Group, Oshkosh Corporation’s Pierce Manufacturing, and Rosenbauer, now control most of the market, a concentration that a bipartisan congressional resolution filed in July traces largely to the serial acquisition of independent manufacturers by private equity firms. Over the past decade, the price of a pumper truck has roughly doubled to nearly $1 million and a ladder truck has climbed toward $2 million, while delivery times have stretched from one or two years to more than four.

“We have seen what happens when private equity takes over an essential public service, and in the General Assembly we refused to accept it in our hospitals and nursing homes,” said Senate President Martin Looney. “Prospect stripped three Connecticut hospitals for profit and walked away in bankruptcy, and the same playbook is now driving up the cost of fire protection and putting firefighters and residents at risk. Private equity has no legitimate role in any enterprise whose purpose is public health or public safety, because the drive to extract the highest possible return can never be reconciled with the duty to keep people alive and safe. Our towns and fire districts do not have to face this alone, and I believe they have a real opportunity to meet this moment together, pooling their purchasing power and sharing resources across municipal lines so that our communities, and not distant investors, set the terms.”

Senate Democrats have recently taken on private equity, in a field where lives are equally at stake. Under private equity ownership, Prospect Medical Holdings cut services and nearly destroyed three of the state’s hospitals in Waterbury, Manchester, and Rockville before declaring bankruptcy in 2025 and leaving thousands of patients without proper care. In response, Senate Democrats passed Public Act 26-22, barring hospitals from the sale-leaseback deals private equity favors and requiring them to attest each year that no private equity entity controls the hospital or its clinical decisions, along with Public Act 26-103, which tightens ownership and financial disclosure requirements for for-profit investment in nursing homes.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kevin Coughlin | kevin.coughlin@cga.ct.gov | 203-710-0193