Town Council Assesses Local Impact of State Budget

State Sen. Tony Guglielmo, R-36th District, and State Rep. Bryan Hurlburt, D-53rd District, along with two representatives from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM), addressed potential impacts of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed budget on the town of Tolland at Tuesday night’s town council meeting.

Town Manager Steven R. Werbner opened the discussion by drawing attention to several cuts proposed in the governor’s budget that he felt would most directly impact the town and its residents, including a reduction of financial support to Tolland’s Dial-a-Ride program.

Already on the agenda for Tuesday night’s meeting was a recommendation from the town Human Services department to apply for a matching grant from the state for senior and disabled transportation services in the amount of $26,471.

Under the governor’s proposed budget, funding for the elderly transportation program could potentially be reduced by 25 percent for towns across the state, said Werbner.

“That is our only source for transportation funds for the elderly that we have, so that’s a concern,” he said.

The town also stands to lose a significant amount of money for education-related transportation. According to Werbner, insufficient state funds for special education were borrowed from the transportation grant. “The impact that has had on us is that we’ve lost $90,000 in revenue that we could have put toward tax base,” he said.

While the Board of Education had been receiving supplementation for special education over the last two years, he doesn’t know if that will continue, and the reduction in transportation funding is still there.

The town receives an $80,000 cut in Payment In Lieu Of Taxes, or PILOT, funds in manufacturing machinery and equipment. Werbner said a few years ago the town was receiving funds in the $100,000-range, but this year it received $75,000.

“We had in my budget for next year anticipated $85,000 worth in revenue,” he said, “and we zeroed that out with the governor’s proposed budget.”

Another place where the budget hits home, Werbner learned Tuesday, is a loss of reimbursement for overtime pay for local state troopers. The argument presented to the town is that it has control over the number of allocated overtime hours. However, Werbner said that translates to having to cancel all overtime, “and that’s not a good thing for public safety,”

Small Town Economic Assistance Program, or STEAP, grants have allowed the town to do “a number of beneficial projects in the community to spur on economic development…which has led directly to jobs,” said Werbner. Under the proposed budget, the town will lose funds in this area as well. He said that, outside of urban areas, there seemed to be no other sources of funding for communities.

While some towns have used STEAP grants to fund ball fields and playgrounds, Hurlburt, who represents Ashford, Tolland and Willington, said, “Tolland has done a good job seeking small town economic assistance projects.” He called for reform in how a STEAP grant is awarded, ensuring it stays true to its purpose: being an economic assistance program.

Werbner and others expressed concerns that the town would have limited access to diversified local revenue streams proposed with the sales tax increase from 6 to 6.35 percent. Tolland would not stand to gain as much as a town with a larger retail base as, say, Manchester or South Windsor.

“I agree that the additional .1 [percent] sales tax for municipalities doesn’t impact my district hard,” Hurlburt said.

“We had talked about increased sales tax and having that come back to municipalities,” said Werbner. He questioned whether revenue from the increased the sales tax would return to the community of origination or whether it would be dispersed on a regional basis.

For towns like Tolland—which also lack newly taxable properties like hotels and airplanes—Hurlburt said it should be done on a regional basis “because we are expending a lot of time and energy on smart growth.”

He praised the town for its of the HVAC system at Hicks Memorial Municipal Center and Library. “I submitted a bill this year that would reimburse town for geothermal retrofit of this building,” he said.

Hurlburt said it was a good investment for the state, as it will reduce operating costs of running the town and increase the opportunity for revenue. “This is the right type of project the state should be investing in its infrastructure. It is a sustainable project. It is a green project. These are the types of things the state should be helping towns do,” he said.

He also addressed the town’s desires to move the commuter lot from its current spot next door to Dunkin’ Donuts and to bring it into a commuter line with the University of Connecticut and the city of Hartford at exit 68. “I think it would do a lot to help the economic viability of the [, to draw people in there and get people off the road,” he said. “This would be a nice way to get some public mass transit out there.”

Kachina Walsh Weaver said CCM, which represents 169 cities and towns, is also addressing recreational land use liability reform, which has been a big issue for local governments that own open space. “There have been very significant lawsuits over the last couple of years that could cause local governments a significant amount of money,” she said. “Local governments are the only property owners right now that are still covered, or still included by, this piece of state statutes.”

Robert Labanara, also of the CCM, said that there are other bills being presented in committees that are not necessarily budget-related but can still affect municipalities. Terming these “death by 1000 cuts,” Labanara said these were well intended, worthy proposals—such as requiring all schools to have carbon monoxide detectors—that still cost money.

Walsh Weaver said that part of the reason the CCM started putting out its mandates report early this year was to show its members and the legislature how one bill with a worthy cause that seemingly has a small impact on local government is also combined with “the other 100 or so bills out there, and all of them together cost a significant amount of money.”

Guglielmo agreed with some members of the council that there does not appear to be a big surge of revenue coming into the state, or the nation for that matter, any time soon. He said that in his more than forty years “in the business,” while he has seen recessions this bad, he has never seen it this bad for as long. 

“I don’t believe there are any easy solutions,” the state senator said, but he and Hurlburt agreed that the budget Malloy has proposed is an honest one, with no gimmicks or securitization. Guglielmo expressed hope that legislators would reach across party lines to tackle the large hole of the state budget, which he said was currently in worst shape than all but seven other states.

“I think it’s great that the governor is going around the state, talking to people, letting them know how bad this is because a lot of it has been papered over,” he said.

Hurlburt praised the governor for of $270 million—a small task that should not be overlooked. Without state help, Tolland stood to lose about $1.5 million in grant revenue.

Council member Dale M. Clayton wondered if there were other areas that could help fill the deep hole of debt, calling for a cut in frivolous expenses. He pointed to State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier’s use of a driver, who parked in a handicapped parking spot in West Hartford last week for Nappier's speaking engagement at Fleming's and was subsequently ticketed.

While the governor, and in some cases the lieutenant governor, had drivers for security purposes, Guglielmo said constitutional officers had drivers out of habit to their station of office. Where a driver is not essential, he said, "I agree, those are the things we’re going to have to start limiting."

Clayton also asked Hurlburt and Guglielmo where they stood on repealing or modifying the prevailing minimum wage laws in the state. He said they have been a “windfall” to companies that would otherwise do work for lower wages. “If we’re all sharing the pain, it seems like that would be one of the places we could share the pain,” he said.

According to Guglielmo, the threshold has not changed in 20 years, but he wondered whether all things should be on the table now.

Labanara said a number of options had been presented to labor representatives. “If it’s going to happen, it would happen in this economy.”

Labanara pointed out that the budget proposal was less than a week old. “Nothing is yet set in stone,” he said, and the details of implementing the blueprint the governor has laid out still need to be figured out.

In the public hearing process, the positives and negatives of the budget will be weighed, to see what makes the best sense for individual districts and the state, said Hurlburt.

“The reality is we could go back to the old way that it was done where we securitized a billion dollars we asked for and ask our children to pay for today’s operating expenditures,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that we are balancing the needs and desires of the community and the state’s residents with the state’s ability to provide them.”