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12/06/2017 07:00 AMArea towns, including Old Saybrook and Westbrook, are evaluating the impact of the new state budget approved by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Dannel P. Malloy in late October. The latest development came on Nov. 17, when the governor imposed spending cuts mandated by the legislature. In addition to significant cuts in higher education and social services, Malloy announced there will be $91 million worth of budget cuts in municipal aid statewide. After Malloy’s announcement, the Council of Small Towns (COST) notified its members about how each town would be affected.
“The final [state] budget included $881.6 million in General Fund Lapses, which in aggregate, requires a reduction of 4.5 percent of all General Fund appropriations. Included in the lapses are $700 million in savings from SEBAC 2017 [the labor deal], leaving $181.6 million to be ‘held back’ across state agencies and municipal aid,” wrote COST in its analysis. SEBAC is the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which during the budget process agreed to concessions designed to save the state billions of dollars over the next 20 years.
These new cuts necessitated by the state budget, approved by the legislature and signed by the governor in late October, are effective in the current fiscal year, effectively making them mid-year cuts.
“The cuts that were announced Friday afternoon should not have taken anyone by surprise,” said First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., after learning of the new aid cuts. “In fact, as early as this past January, as I was planning for this year’s budget, I proposed a selectman’s budget that included a revenue figure that was less
than what the bipartisan budget eventually allotted to Old Saybrook. Now, as they have every fiscal year for the last three years, the state is enacting mid-year cuts. Here in Old Saybrook, we are prepared. The prudent budgeting that we proposed in the spring insulates us from these cuts, and what I anticipate will be additional reductions through this fiscal year. Unfortunately, this is simply business as usual from the State of Connecticut.”
Sam Gold, executive director of the Lower Connecticut River Valley Council of Governments (RiverCOG) informed the members chief executive officers that the holdbacks the governor announced cut COG’s state aid by 38 percent, which will likely affect both its staffing and programming.
The Connecticut Office of Policy and Management developed and shared a detailed spreadsheet listing each Connecticut town and city and how it would be affected by the holdbacks.
In total, the Town of Westbrook was to receive $652,929 in Fiscal Year 2017 in aid. Appropriated for Fiscal Year 2018 was $646,116, but only $615,694 was allotted to the town. Now, applying the new holdback percentage of 4.7 percent, Westbrook will receive $615,694, a cut of $30,424.
For Old Saybrook, the statutory aid formula would have sent $537,295 in Fiscal Year 2017 in aid. Appropriated for Fiscal Year 2018 was $552,122, but only $533,546 was allotted to the town. Applying a hold-back percentage of 3.4 percent, the town will receive $18,577 less than promised.
The state’s Office of Policy & Management (OPM) also announced the state would re-assume responsibility for administering the renter’s rebate program that helps low-income seniors and the disabled, but OPM also put towns on warning that they would be responsible for paying one-half of the costs of the rebates paid. OPM wrote that it would deduct the 50 percent owed by towns from other state aid grant amounts that the town receives.