House OKs big municipal aid pledge
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a measure Wednesday that effectively promises $110 million to $120 million in new annual aid to cities and towns — but doesn’t officially fund the initiative just yet.
The House also endorsed fast-track legislation from Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration to encourage data center development in Connecticut.
Both measures now head to the Senate, which had been scheduled to meet Thursday but now plans to meet on Monday.
“Today is a little different, it’s unorthodox,” House Speaker Matt Ritter, DHartford, said before Wednesday’s session, at which lawmakers endorsed a new new program to bolster non-education aid for communities with large quantities of tax-exempt property. “We want to put a marker down.”
The “marker” Ritter referenced involves the state budget for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years — a package not expected to be adopted before May or later. More specifically, the enhanced PILOT or Payment In Lieu Of Taxes grant methodology that cleared the House doesn’t include a mechanism to pay for it.
But Ritter said local finance boards and municipal councils across Connecticut can count on those additional funds being included in the next two-year state budget roughly three months from now.
“It’s going to be a cornerstone of what we do,” the speaker added. “We want them to feel confident they can rely on … these figures.”
PILOT grants are supposed to replace about 45% of the funds communities lose because they can’t tax state property. Communities currently get less than 15% back, according to the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Similarly, the grants once designed to replace 77% of taxes lost on nonprofit colleges and hospitals now cover less than 25%.
No community would receive less PILOT aid than it currently does through the bill under consideration, but those in low-income municipalities would receive additional funds.
Gov. Ned Lamont, who did not propose any additional PILOT funding in the biennial budget he recommended on Feb. 10, instead proposed giving towns a one-time $100 million boost in non-education aid next fiscal year — with half coming from state borrowing and half from emergency federal coronavirus relief funds.
Lamont nonetheless backed the measure passed in the House on Wednesday by a margin of 125-24. “Changes to our PILOT program will help lift up our cities, the cultural heartbeats of our state, and provide them with the resources they need to thrive,” the governor said.
Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme, ranking House Republican on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, questioned why majority Democrats were enacting a bill that guaranteed no funding, offering little more than a promise.
But Cheeseman, who voted for the bill, added that towns desperately need the funds and warned lawmakers would be held accountable if they don’t deliver the dollars in May.
“If we don’t live up to our word as a legislature,” she added, Connecticut would have to “change our motto from the Land of Steady Habits to the Land of Broken Promises.”
Advocates for cities and towns, which have seen their finances rocked by the coronavirus pandemic and related economic chaos, expressed similar sentiments this week.
“Our hope is that it’s not just very real this year, but that it’s sustainable,” said Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, who added that communities are grateful for all the added support. “There has to be a commitment here.”