The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Frustration rises among area lawmakers as state budget deadline passes
Bransfield: Legislators must ‘leave politics aside,’ craft budget that won’t raise local taxes
PORTLAND — Yet another deadline for action on the lingering state budget impasse has come and gone.
It is past time for the General Assembly to get serious about ending the stalemate, First Selectwoman Susan S. Bransfield said Monday.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s self-imposed deadline for the General Assembly to pass a budget he could sign expired Sunday. That opens the door to potential deep cuts in education funding for 85 cities and towns.
For Portland, that could amount to $4.3 million just in Education Cost Sharing and special education funding alone, Bransfield said. While Malloy has warned those funds could be at risk, Bransfield noted that last year, the ECS funds the state pays to the town did not arrive until Oct. 28.
Speaking from her Town Hall office Monday morning via telephone, Bransfield described Malloy’s Oct. 1 deadline as “arbitrarily imposed.” Bransfield is also this year’s president of the Connecticut Council of Municipalities, a lobbying group for a majority of the state’s 169 cities and towns.
As members of the state Senate and House of Representatives continue trying to resolve the impasse, “We’re encouraging our elected representatives to leave the politics aside,” said Bransfield, who outlined three principles she said legislators need to keep in mind as they try to fashion a viable budget.
“We need real municipal structural reforms that will help municipalities deal with the fiscal realities,” Bransfield said. “There have to be changes going forward because there needs to be some revenue diversifications for municipalities — beyond just a reliance on the property tax.”
Second was, “The budget cannot increase local property taxes,” she said. “They can’t be pushing the need for additional revenues off on the cities and towns, so they’ve got to make sure the budget doesn’t increase the burden on the local property tax.”
Thirdly, “The budget they ultimately pass must provide a path toward health and prosperity for the residents in all the cities and towns,” Bransfield said.
She was emphatic on one other point.
“Clearly, that proposal that would require the cities and towns to contribute to the teacher retirement but that is totally unacceptable,” Bransfield said. Municipalities “did not have a say in negotiating those pension agreements,” so they should not be responsible for assuming the costs of what is a responsibility of the state, she said.
Legislators, regardless of which party they belong to, “have to put Connecticut first,” Bransfield said, adding, “They need to forget the politics.” Not to do so puts the future of the state at risk, she said.
Since her involvement with CCM, Bransfield said she has studied the issues in more detail and how they affect residents across the state.
“The reason people stay here in Connecticut is because they like the services we provide our cities and towns, as well as the lifestyle and the education system we have created,” Bransfield said. “If people, especially those who live in small towns, don’t have access to those services, than the state falls apart.”
She commented on suggestions that Malloy send armed state troopers to the Capitol to lock the doors and keep the General Assembly in session around the clock until they adopt a budget.
“It might take that, or something like that, to get them to act,” she said, before dismissing the idea and renewing her call for legislators to step up and “do their job.”
Some $4.5 million in education funds are at stake for Cromwell, Town Manager Anthony J. Salvatore said Monday. While he believes the town has adequate funds available to continue operating through April if need be, Salvatore is adamant that it cannot, and should not, take that long to resolve the budget impasse.
Legislators “should be back at the Capitol every day until they come up with a responsible budget,” he said.
Even before the General Assembly convened its session in February, Salvatore repeatedly said Legislators should have focused solely and completely on passing a budget and not allowed themselves to become distracted from that responsibility, he said.
Meanwhile, Salvatore said, “Any reduction in town aid is an indirect tax increase by the state. A reduction in state aid will result in one of two things: either a reduction in the services we provide, or an increase in taxes on our local citizens.”