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02/20/2019 07:00 AMJoe Zullo, the Republican candidate for the 99th Assembly District seat, has served as town attorney for the last seven years. He is also on the Board of Directors for the East Haven Chamber of Commerce and volunteers for the Fall Festival Committee and its 5k Road Race.
He passed the bar exam in 2011 with a law degree from Quinnipiac University.
“We have to get this budget balanced and to do that, we have to rein in taxes,” Zullo said. “We can’t continue to look at tax hikes as budget solutions, because they’re not.”
Zullo said he disagrees with recent proposals to introduce new taxes or increase old ones.
“One of the most recent things [Governor Ned Lamont] announced, which I actually do agree with, is that we have to put the state on a debt diet,” he said. “I’d like to see us cut our debt in half.”
Zullo said that the money saved from reduced debt would be the best way to pay for operational expenses. He believes that increasing revenue is not the only solution to the state’s economic problems.
“Over the last seven years, [East Haven has] reduced our long-term debt by 60 percent. We’ve reduced our yearly debt service payment by almost $6 million,” Zullo said.
He said that this reduction enabled the town to put more money into services and infrastructure projects without raising taxes.
“If you abuse your credit cards the way our state abuses its credit card, you’d be a serial chapter seven filer,” he said.
He also supports improving the state’s railways and otherwise working on transportation infrastructure to make Connecticut a more attractive location for businesses coming in. He opposes tolls as a way of funding those improvements, however.
“I am against tolls,” Zullo said. “I believe they’re an unethical tax on the middle class no different than the proposal to tax groceries and medicine.”
Regarding efforts to increase the minimum wage, he said he wants to make sure that raising the wage will not have a stifling effect on youth employment and state aid recipients losing benefits.
“I want to have a real, substantive discussion about raising the minimum wage,” Zullo said.
Another priority would be addressing opioid abuse. In particular, Zullo supports mandatory treatment following the use of Narcan and getting back to educating youth about drugs in the light of many municipalities dialing back the DARE program due to questions of its effectiveness.
“It was actually a proposal that was instituted in East Haven a number of years ago before Mayor [Joseph] Maturo [Jr.] came back to office,” Zullo said. “One of his first priorities was bringing it back.”
On the hot-button issues of increasing gambling opportunities and legalizing recreational marijuana, he sees gambling as a safer leisure activity to legalize and tax for the sake of revenue generation, noting that he’s seen studies that suggest violent crimes have gone up where marijuana is legal.
“Before I weigh in entirely on [legalizing marijuana], I want to see a little bit more data,” Zullo said. “As of right now, I am opposed to it.”
Zullo said that English as a second language and special education are some of the areas the state needs to work on.
“I’d like to see the state look into allocating additional funding for programs like that because those are our most vulnerable citizens,” he said.