State Budget Impact On Newtown Is Minimal

By Steve Bigham

The Town of Newtown stands to lose $17,148 in state aid following the passage of last week’s 2002-03 state budget in Hartford.

 Some reports had the figure as high as $70,000, but Finance Director Ben Spragg said the shortfall was much less as he was more conservative in his estimate.

“We estimated revenue from the state based on the governor’s proposed budget. Then the state’s Appropriations Committee came out with their budget, which had a very large increase for the ECS [Educational Cost Sharing] grant,” Mr Spragg said.

Instead of going with the new estimates, Mr Spragg estimated the final budget figure to come in somewhere between the two.

“We were cautioned that some of the appropriations figures would probably not be funded. What we did was we went in between the governor’s and the appropriations budget. We increased our estimate, but we estimated $3.76 million and it came in as $3.8 million,” Mr Spragg said. “It worked to our benefit in that instead of overestimating by $70,000, we overestimated by $17,000.”

Still, a cut is a cut and First Selectman Herb Rosenthal’s frustrations with the state government continue.

“The problem as I see it is the governor and the legislature just don’t fulfill the promises they’ve made to towns. They’re not funding us to the prior statutes and formulas that were passed. They had a biennial budget they approved a year ago and then they changed it,” he said.

The state legislature last week approved a $13.2 billion budget. The fiscal plan cuts aid to cities and towns by $28 million and imposes a five percent cut across-the-board to state universities and colleges.

Facing an $800 million shortfall, Republicans and Democrats struggled with how they were going to fill the gap. Democrats favored some new taxes, most notably a tax on Connecticut’s millionaires, and the GOP favored a range of spending cutbacks. In the end, the compromised spending plan left most legislators agreeing on one thing –– they had passed a bad budget.

Mr Rosenthal said the $800 million shortfall was simply a case of bad planning.

“The worst thing the legislature did was a total cop out, giving the governor the authority to rescind $35 million in grants midyear [e.g. the Mashantucket Pequot grant]. What right does he have to cut back on grants midyear?” Mr Rosenthal said.

Even worse, the first selectman added, Governor Rowland will not have to rescind the grants until after the election in November.

“They talk about the state and local partnership, but it’s very strange partnership. Every town in the state has had to raise local taxes,” Mr Rosenthal said.