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05/23/2019 12:01 AMI’ve had a number of people ask me why I don’t address the budget situation at the state level in more detail and more often in my column. Because the situation is very fluid, anything I say today could change tomorrow. I will, however, list some of the things we need to fear as they move through the General Assembly.
Teacher’s Retirement System: Last week at our Board of Selectmen meeting, we drafted a resolution stating our opposition to the State of Connecticut shifting the teachers’ pension costs to the municipalities. The governor has proposed that towns pick up the cost of the teachers’ pensions that haven’t been funded by the state as they should have been over time. At the same time, the state will continue to cut our Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funding, which is almost at zero anyway. The billing for this and the cuts to ECS would result in a net cost to the town of more than $500,000 over the next two years alone, and the state plans to increase this incrementally every year.
This is not a cost we should have to shoulder. The state taxed us over the years and some of those taxes were to be used to fund this. They weren’t and now the state wants to double-dip. As a member of the Executive Board of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, I have been part of the team negotiating with the governor and his staff to delay implementation of this plan until a better alternative can be found. We have several proposals on the table to mitigate the problem.
Tolls: The initial proposal for tolls would have the state erecting about 85 toll gantries across the entire state at a cost (tolls) to the average resident of about $1,000 per year. In our meeting with the governor, we told him that was unrealistic. In response, his staff came back with a proposal a week later to limit the number of tolls to no more than 50, have them only on I-95, I-91, I-84, and Route 15 and incorporate discounts for residents and frequent flyers. The rationale for tolls is that New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have them (that we pay), and why shouldn’t we get the same from out-of-staters? Tolls will impact those of us along I-95 more so than other inland towns. I don’t want to see tolls, but if this proposal gets life, it has to be fairer for a state that is already over-taxed.
Recreational Marijuana: We only have to look at other states that have legalized marijuana to see that there are hidden costs, both financial and societal, that need to be considered. In addition, it has long been understood that cannabis use can be associated with “persistent and substantial cognitive changes” to the brain, especially in individuals under 26 years old. We don’t need to make matters worse.
I’ll keep you posted as these situations develop.