Anti-poverty bill approved as effort to repeal state car tax fails
The General Assembly’s tax-writing committee reached its deadline for action Wednesday, approving nearly half a billion dollars more than the governor had proposed in long-term projects around the state. A 10year effort to fight innercity poverty and a new program for urban sports that would be funded through a 2% diversion of state gambling revenue also advanced.
Left by the side of the road, as the budget negotiations between lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont begin soon, was a proposed five-year phase-out of local property taxes on vehicles that would have been funded by corresponding increases in real estate taxes. The bill died without being called for debate in the Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee, after a legislative task force failed this year to agree on a proposal.
First-term Sen. MD Rahman, D-Manchester, who headed the task force, was stoic. “Although the committee’s reluctance to advance this proposal phasing out the regressive and unpopular car tax is a disappointing setback, its progress this year is encouraging,” Rahman said in a statement after the committee ended its work without taking up the bill. “Big ideas often take years to pass and I look forward to continuing my efforts to repeal this unfair tax that puts a disproportionate strain on some members of our community.”
While Lamont’s budget adjustments in February proposed an increase of $130 million to the state’s $4 billion capital budget for the fiscal year starting July 1, the committee’s bill, which won bipartisan approval, would raise it by about $450 million, including $165 million starting in the 2025-26 budget year for the expansion of the University of Connecticut, and $35 million for preparations for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.
Another $150 million would create a new Legacy Investment Fund for small towns and cities to compete for economic development grants. A new $2 million pool of money would become available for small historical and cultural institutions in a program called “Good to Great.” The bonding package includes $10 million for climate resiliency programs, $10 million for waste diversion and $50 million for early childhood initiatives.
State Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, a co-chairwoman of the bonding subcommittee, said the bill was a bipartisan effort in which lawmakers visited around the state to better understand the needs of agencies and institutions. “This is important to remember that this is this legislative committee’s bonding bill,” said Sen. Tony Hwang of
Fairfield a ranking Republican on the bonding subcommittee, stressing that it is now subject to further negotiations.
Veteran conservative Rep. John Piscopo, RThomaston, also voted in favor of the bill, but admitted to “a bit of a sticker shock” on the wish list of capital expenditures that would be paid back over time in the state’s debt service. “It’s a tough pill to swallow,” he said. “There’s a lot of new spending in this bill.”
The anti-poverty effort, targeting census tracts in 10 cities, was opposed by minority Republicans. Under the proposal, a new Office of Neighborhood Investment and Community Engagement would be created within the Department of Economic and Community Development with an annual budget of $270,000 to oversee the program.
“These are issues that are of great concern to everyone,” said Rep. Holly Cheeseman of East Lyme, a ranking Republican on the committee who voted against the bill drafted by Sen. John Fonfara, DHartford, the longtime committee co-chairman. She said the bill is vague on how the program would start out, and would need metrics to gauge success including student achievement and increased job opportunities.
“It’s going to take a 10year plan for us to be concentrated in looking at it ... poverty, I believe, is a social construct,” said Moore, noting that her hometown of Bridgeport is among the poorest in the state. “We keep giving money into program and program and never getting to the root of the problem.”
Fonfara noted that decades of disinvestment in the state’s major cities causes severe harm to children who live in concentrated poverty.
“What we accept and tolerate is criminal,” Fonfara said. “We doom the children, we doom adults to a substandard life in terms of income, in terms of opportunity, in terms of enjoying the quality of life that the vast majority of the state enjoys.” Ten communities would be eligible for the assistance, he stressed. “That’s how concentrated poverty is. By the way, the vast majority of the folks that live in these communities are Black and Latino, and we’re okay with that.”
The bill would use some gambling revenue to fund sports for children under the age of 18 in distressed communities, although some lawmakers including Bristol Sen. Henri Martin, a ranking Republican on the committee, criticized utilizing sports-gambling revenue. “It just doesn’t feel right, I guess, that we should be using that,” said Martin, a former high school soccer coach who warned that the bill would be off-budget in an apparent attempt to skirt legislative fiscal rules.
About $16 million in state revenue came into state coffers from online and retail sports wagering in 2022, according to the state Department of Consumer Protection.
Finance Committee members acknowledged that legislative leaders and the governor will have to reach a compromise for the budget, including the apparent attempt to move the sports programming in distressed municipalities away from the spending cap, a tactic that Lamont opposes. The committee finished its work in the short budget-adjustment session without tinkering with taxes.
With only the budgetwriting Appropriations Committee left to report a spending package on Thursday, the legislative committee process is mostly completed in the 13-week so-called short session that ends at midnight May 8.