Budget strands rent-relief funds

The budget approved by the General Assembly and signed into law last month by the governor strands $26.4 million in elderly rental relief within the governor’s budget office.

In changing the responsibility of paying local rental grants to the towns and cities, lawmakers put the funding into the budget of the state Office of Policy Management. So OPM has the money but lacks the authority to distribute the grants to tens of thousands of low-income senior citizens.

Connecticut municipalities have the power to determine who gets the money, but no way to distribute it to eligible elderly living in apartments, rooms, cooperative housing or mobile homes.

The potentially embarrassing bureaucratic nightmare means that when lawmakers get together again, likely later this month — to finalize issues over Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s line-item veto of the tax on hospitals in the $41.3 billion budget — they will have to correct the elderly rental language as well.

Ben Barnes, Malloy’s secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, wrote a letter to legislative leaders this week explaining the problem. Barnes noted that earlier in the month, he advised chief elected officials throughout the state that they would now be responsible for making the payments to

renters. “Now, I cannot issue checks without the statutory authority to do so.”

‘Legislative solution’

Barnes asked House and Senate leaders to address the issue when they resume the current special legislative session.

“Any legislative solution should be crafted to specifically address questions such as who processes the checks, who has the responsibility to pay eligible individuals and whether pro-rated amounts will be allowed,” he wrote.

Av Harris, director of legislative affairs and public policy for the city of Bridgeport, said Wednesday if the state budget isn’t rewritten, Bridgeport would have to pay $2.5 million to keep the program going for hundreds of city seniors.

“This is one of the facets of the budget that we were surprised by, when we took a close look a few days after it was enacted,” Harris said. “It first looked like it shifted the burden to the municipalities exclusively. A lot of seniors are on fixed incomes and need help to pay their bills. They have to make very difficult choices. If the burden to reimburse folks just fell on Bridgeport alone, it would be a $2.5 M hit that we weren’t anticipating. We are relieved to see that OPM has the funds.”

In 2013, the program paid out $24.5 million for 47,700 individuals, according to the OPM. But for the fiscal year that began on July 1, lawmakers cut it to $12.7 million from the previous appropriation of $27.3 million. Participants must be 65, or be 50 years old and the surviving spouse of a renter who at the time of death was qualified for the assistance. Also, disabled people over 18 are eligible, based on income and a one-year residency.

Benefits, in the form of rebates, range from $900 for married couple and $700 for singles.

Senior issues

Fairfield First Selectman Mike Tetreau said Wednesday that while the rentalrebate program represents a $100,000 loss, he expects lawmakers to soon clean up the issue.

“Because the money is allocated, when the Legislature meets in a couple weeks to solve a couple issues, they will solve that one,” Tetreau said.

But the bigger issue is the termination of the elderly tax credit, which the town of Fairfield included in its current budget.

“We’ve already sent out our tax bills, and that’s a $400,000 revenue loss we have to make up,” Tetreau said. “We’ve already set the mill rate.”

Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, RNorth Haven, said Wednesday that legislative leaders expect to agree on a new draft of the rebate program when they meet on Thursday to determine a date for a special legislative session.

“We agree we need to fix it,” Fasano said in a phone interview.

Adam Joseph, communications director for state Senate Democrats, said the session will likely occur within the next few weeks. “The rental rebate program is something on which senior citizens rely in order to make ends meet,” he said.