This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
08/23/2017 09:00 AMOn Aug. 18, Governor Dannel P. Malloy landed another blow on municipalities: If no budget is adopted by Oct. 1, 85 school districts will lose all of their Education Cost Sharing (ECS) money and another 54 would see reduce funding. While the possibility sounds alarming, Madison officials are working to remind residents that Madison was not expected to receive much aid regardless and that the town prepared for this possibility.
“In the absence of an adopted budget from the General Assembly, my administration is reallocating resources to pay for basic human services, education in our most challenged school districts, and the basic operation of government,” Malloy said. “The municipal aid that is funded as part of this executive order reflects the nearly impossible decisions Connecticut must make in the absence of a budget. It will force some of our municipalities—both large and small—to make similarly difficult choices of their own.”
For many towns along the shoreline, those “difficult choices” will mean finding a way to fill the void left by millions of dollars of cuts. Locally, Branford, Chester, Clinton, Deep River, Essex, Guilford, Killingworth, North Haven, Old Saybrook, and Westbrook would join Madison with an ECS funding drop to zero. In the prior fiscal year, after the mid-year cuts, Madison received $446,496 in ECS money.
Under the governor’s February budget proposal, Madison and many other municipalities would see a reduction in state aid and would be asked to contribute to the teachers pension plan. If the governor’s proposal were to pass, Madison would receive $2,275,237 in state aid in the next fiscal year, but would contribute $2,602,739 to the teacher pension plan, effectively negating state aid. In the end, the town would end up owing the state $327,502.
With no clear word on what Madison’s state revenue might look like in the current year, Madison still had to, by charter, put its budget to referendum in May. At the time, rumors and comments from state officials suggested that municipalities taking on a portion of the state teacher pensions this year is unlikely, but Board of Finance (BOF) Chair Joe MacDougald said the town had made assumptions to account for a reduction in statutory state aid. He said the BOF has set aside funds to apply to the mill rate if the state cuts exceed current expectations.
While Madison made prudent fiscal decisions in regards to the possibility of the loss in state aid, First Selectman Tom Banisch said it is still unpleasant to see a proposal like this from the governor.
“This is not going to kill us,” he said. “It is not good news but we were prepared… We did not assume it would happen but we anticipated it would happen.”
ECS money is the primary way the state helps municipalities run their schools. With state experiencing budget problems, the Madison Board of Education (BOE) built in certain assumptions to the budget that was passed in May. The BOE budget came to $56,919,205, representing a $1,433,001 or 2.58 percent increase in spending. The education budget includes standard operational increases, but also incorporates personnel reductions in anticipation of a loss in state revenue. Superintendent of Schools Tom Scarice said this budget reflects a reduction of 7.5 certified teaching positions across the district, a move designed to respond to declining enrollment and dwindling state funding.
“It is important to note that the recent widespread coverage of the projected loss of ECS from the state was anticipated and planned for by the BOE last year,” he said. “The BOE had the foresight to assume we would not receive this revenue for the 2017-’18 school year. In their deliberations and planning for the [20]17-’18 budget, the BOE made significant staff reductions at the high school level (four teaching positions) that were completely unrelated to, and in addition to, the staff reductions that were based on student enrollment decline. This move was explicitly intended to make a good faith effort to offset the anticipated loss of state revenue.”
Regardless of if municipalities like Madison were prepared for a possible hit like this, State Representative Noreen Kokoruda (R-101) said she has a problem with the fact that the state now doesn’t see a responsibility to give something to every child in every school.
“Over the years I have watched the poorer communities get a much larger share and I think we have accepted that over the years,” she said. “I just don’t think we ever expected the state to totally walk way from any funding responsibility for ECS.”
If the state eliminates ECS payments to Madison, Kokoruda said she hopes to see a serious conversation start over mandate relief, freeing towns from regulations over binding arbitration and prevailing wage. However, Kokoruda said she doesn’t expect this proposal to stick.
“We are how many weeks away from having to make the first ECS payments and I think it really was a push to get the leadership of the House and the Senate to move,” she said. “I mean, we were told we were going to have a budget June 7, we were told we were going to have a budget June 16, then we were told we were coming to the end of the month, and then we were coming back July 18, and we have yet to see anything on paper.”
Kokoruda said she doesn’t see massive cuts to certain municipalities that reach into the $20 million range as sustainable and she doesn’t believe the governor sees them as sustainable either, making this recent announcement more of a scare tactic than a reality.
“I think this is just to shake everyone up number one, get everybody moving number two, and I think when they come in with their tax increases, they are all of a sudden not going to sound so terrible because ‘Oh my God we are going to lose $20 million for our town, of course we are going to support the tax increase,’” she said. “I don’t know if they did it on purpose, but it was an incredible maneuver.”
No matter what happens with the ECS money, Kokoruda said the number she is really worried about is still floating around.
“My big concern is what is going to happen with the teacher pension payments,” she said.