Lamont’s plan for regional cooperation gains support
WETHERSFIELD —The daunting thickets of labor union contracts and restrictive municipal charters that for decades have hindered, if not downright prohibited municipalities from sharing services with neighboring communities, would become less-onerous under legislation proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont that and endorsed Thursday by regional organizations.
Leaders of the Council of Small Towns and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities joined Lamont at the Wethersfield Town Hall Thursday to support pending legislation that would make it easier for communities to share personnel and resources in order to save money.
“You know I come out of small business, and I knew how expensive it was to contract everything out until you got to a certain scale where you could afford to hire on a full time basis yourself,” said Lamont, a former cable TV entrepreneur. “That’s what we’re trying to do with this bill: Make it easier for our small towns to be able to get A, the level of expertise they need and when they need it, they don’t have to spend more than that.”
Shared jobs such as building inspectors and human resource officials are already being used in towns in some parts of the state. Lamont’s legislation, pending in the General Assembly’s Planning and Development Commission, would let willing communities expand shared services.
It would supercede limits in local charters and state laws, as well as some unionized contract language. Union locals could join with other unions, sometimes within the same municipalities. Another section would give the state’s regional councils of government the ability to hire staff that could be used by member towns.
“Everything from IT to housing,” Lamont said, recalling the wide mix of expertise among the state’s various local and regional health departments during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I think it should be able to improve the quality of service that we’re providing. This is non-prescriptive. I have learned: no mandates. I think also it’s really important in terms of savings and what it means for our towns.”
He said that savings could also translate on the local level, with stable or lower property taxes. “This bill came up because we were trying to think of different ways to hold down property taxes,” he said, adding that expanding local grand lists of taxable property through new development also helps.
Joe DeLong, executive director and CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which represents all towns and cities except Vernon, said that the issue dates back to at least 2017, when a CCM report distilled the interests of 30 town and city officials who brainstormed ideas on creating more efficiencies, such as those included in the governor’s proposal. Differences among bargaining units became an immediate problem. Giving unions the flexibility to form coalitions could be a solution, he said.
“This bill has a provision in it that just simply says you can’t bargain away service sharing,” DeLong said. “You can’t bargain away the ability to help your neighbor.” Another section of the bill would override local town and city charters that currently prohibit service sharing across borders. “This is the first time we’ve had a governor who’s picked up the torch on that and put it into legislation.”
“Small towns are always looking for ways to improve the effectiveness of the delivery of services,” said Betsy Gara, executive director of the Council of Small Towns. “Looking for ways to reduce costs, to reduce the burden on property tax payers. At the same time our small towns are struggling to fill certain positions, to find volunteers to meet some of the statutory obligations that they need to do.”
She pointed to the state law in recent years that required all towns and cities to establish Fair Rent commissions. “Some of the towns are saying ‘Wait a minute, we don’t have the staff, we don’t have the volunteers to serve on the commission and at the same time we really don’t have a lot of rental units in our community that warrants us establishing a Fair Rent Commission in our town,’ ” she said. “They’ve explored options to regionalize this, and unfortunately they ran into a statutory barrier. They could not do that under the way the statute reads.”
Another hurdle has been the required update of local affordable housing plans. “And towns said, you know what? Why can’t we do this working with our regional councils of government, working with our neighboring communities, to really get an idea of some of the housing demands in our region?” Gara said. But current state law requires each town and city to do their own plan. Lamont’s proposal would make it easier to create regional housing assessments, she said.
Matt Hart, executive director of the Capitol Regional Council of Governments, said the possibilities could include smaller towns purchasing services from larger neighbors, or a group of communities agreeing to share staff. “It could be a service that is provided by a council of governments,” he said. “It allows us to capture an economy of scale. In many cases it allows us to provide a more robust and comprehensive service, especially smaller towns that may only have parttime employees performing a function.”