Connecticut HB 5422

Connecticut House Bill 5422, "An Act Concerning a Study of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena," was a 2026 proposal in the Connecticut General Assembly to commission a state study of UAP and of whether the state should create a center to research them. The Appropriations Committee raised it in the February 2026 session, and it was referred to that committee on February 27. Representatives Joe Hoxha, a Republican from the 78th District, and Aundre Bumgardner, a Democrat from the 41st District, were listed as co-sponsors. Hoxha, who wrote the bill, told the CT Mirror he wanted a program that could "record, study and collect data on UAPs that are seen in Connecticut skies," while keeping the work away from what he called "crazy and wacky conspiracy theories."

As raised, the bill directed the University of Connecticut to conduct the study "within available resources." University staff were to consult the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Office of Military Affairs and the director of the Connecticut chapter of "the national nonprofit organization dedicated to the investigation of UFO sightings, abductions, and other unexplained phenomena," and the university was to be given access to data collected by those agencies. The study had to cover the benefits of a state UAP research center and the resources needed to run one, with a report to the legislature's public safety, environment, military affairs and appropriations committees by July 1, 2027. The committee's report said UAP was a concern to many residents "given potential impacts to airspace safety and national defense."

The committee heard testimony on March 12, 2026. Supporters included Americans for Safe Aerospace, whose representatives called for an objective, multidisciplinary study and raised concerns about UAP over military installations; retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, who said he had viewed previously classified Navy F/A-18 video from a 2015 training exercise involving a near midair collision with an unidentified aircraft; physicist Kevin Knuth; the state director of MUFON; a Pratt & Whitney engineer; and a group of Yale faculty and staff. Hoxha testified that Connecticut has the highest rate of UAP sightings per capita. Several residents opposed the bill as a waste of taxpayer money. UConn's assistant dean for operations supported its intent but asked for $300,000 to carry out the study, and Commissioner Ronnell Higgins of the emergency services department objected to the data-access language, saying much of the department's data was too sensitive to release.

On April 1 the committee voted 35 to 16 for a substitute bill. It replaced UConn with the Office of Legislative Management, which would contract with a nonprofit that advises state government on science and engineering, and it dropped the requirement that agencies share their data. The Office of Fiscal Analysis found no fiscal impact, because the legislative office already had a standing contract with the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering for studies of this kind. The substitute was printed as File No. 629 and placed on the House calendar as Calendar No. 421 on April 14.

That was the bill's last recorded action. The General Assembly's own bill history shows no House vote and no Senate action after April 14, so the bill expired when the 2026 regular session ended in May, and no study was commissioned. It still had an afterlife among advocates: in April 2026 the activist network Disclosure Party circulated a model state proposal adapted from its text for supporters to take to their own legislators. Its record shows how far the idea got in Connecticut in 2026: a public hearing, a committee vote and a rewritten text, but no vote by either chamber.