Less than 48 hours after the Legislative Council decided to reserve for future needs about $573,000 in state revenues the town was anticipating after Connecticut finally ratified its 2017-18 state budget, Governor Dannel Malloy announced spending cuts that slashed Newtown's anticipated local revenues to $102,571.The Connecticut Mirror, Gov Malloy imposed more than $880 million in spending cuts mandated by the General Assembly. Contractual obligations and other factors actually left him little flexibility to do anything else and still meet the legislature's directive.The Mirror reported that labor cost-cutting moves, as required under last summer's concessions deal with unionized state employees, account for the biggest chunk of savings, with the governor assigning most of the remaining cuts to social service programs, higher education, and municipal aid.governor.malloy@ct.gov - "to tell him how wrong and how much you disagree with his vision for Connecticut is. And cc me at Tony.Hwang@cga.ct.gov."

During a November 15 council meeting, officials were told that the final state budget approval would return enough previously unexpected revenue to apply $1,032,000 to an earlier reduction in the school district's special education budget, along with supplying an additional $573,000 previously earmarked to cover contributions to the school district's pension fund, its maintenance budget, the town's pension fund, and road repairs.

But a little after 1 pm on November 17, the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (OPM) under the leadership of Secretary Ben Barnes announced the distribution of budgeted lapses for Fiscal Year 2018. The newly enacted budget (Public Act 17-2 JSS) directs the Office of Policy and Management to make adjustments necessary to achieve the lapse and savings targets identified in the budget in order to reach balance.

"Although we've only had a budget for 17 days, the fact is we're already more than four months into the fiscal year, which means these adjustments need to be made now in order to achieve the necessary savings," said OPM Secretary Barnes. "State agencies and outside groups alike need to know what resources are available from the state budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. In addition, Monday's consensus revenue forecast suggested that the governor may need to exercise his statutory rescission authority or the General Assembly may need to take further actions to balance the budget in the months ahead.

"These holdbacks represent real, difficult decisions that the bipartisan budget agreement requires state government to make. But they're also necessary in order to give taxpayers, businesses, and bondholders the stability they need and deserve," the OPM secretary continued. "The holdbacks impacted categories of spending including $91 originally intended for municipal aid."

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The $880 million in reductions, commonly referred to as "holdbacks," represent a 4.5 percent cut to gross spending in the new state budget for this fiscal year. The average cut to all municipal grants was 2.5 percent.

"It's certainly frustrating for towns to hear that - just a few weeks after the state budget was finalized - they are facing additional cuts," said Betsy Gara, executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns. "Now they are wondering what is next. This just adds to the uncertainty and the frustration."

"New additional cuts approaching $100 million must be absorbed - through service reductions or local tax hikes - nearly halfway through the fiscal year," the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities wrote in a statement. "Municipal governments will have increasing difficulty trying to manage their current year spending, having to again adjust for a shortfall in revenues less than a month after being told to count on a defined level of state aid."

First Selectman Pat Llodra said there is no way she and other local officials could have ever anticipated all of this was going to happen.

"And thank God the council made the decision to not act and to hold back on spending those extra funds," she said. "Had that not been the case, we would have found ourselves short. The council wisely restored the funds to the Board of Ed, but held off on allocating the rest of it. Now it can be accommodated under this further recision by the governor, if that is what the council chooses to do versus making further reductions. At least they have an option now to reserve those resources to meet additional cuts, although with much less wiggle room."

Newtown's State Senator Tony Hwang railed against the distribution of state budget lapses proposed by the governor saying, "Dannel Malloy in effect just raised local property taxes across all of Connecticut by ignoring the will of the Connecticut General Assembly."

Sen Hwang accused the governor of pushing the financial burden of an "inefficient state government onto fiscally responsible communities."

"He's been a record-setting tax hiker since he was elected governor," Sen Hwang said. "He's obviously good at it from his latest ill-advised ten-year state labor union agreement along with proposing draconian municipal and education executive cuts and rebuked efforts to redistribute the teachers pension to local town budgets. Now, it continues with his latest uneven and biased budget cuts that adds more distress and uncertainty to local governments."

He said Malloy is completely ignoring the legislative intent of the recently passed state budget. 

"Instead of adopting the targeted savings identified by the legislature, including specific cuts to overtime and consolidation of government administrative functions, the governor continues to work towards his goal of inflicting deep cuts to municipalities and social services that legislators are committed to protecting," Sen Hwang said.

"He cut education grants, even after the clear mandate from the bipartisan and overwhelming passage of the budget. Governor Malloy is blatantly ignoring the will of the legislature, and unilaterally doing what he wanted to do all along. He is going out of his way to dismiss suggested savings and instead dramatically reduce funding to municipalities and educational efforts, while turning a blind eye to the careful efforts of lawmakers to protect towns and cities."

The senator encouraged Newtown residents to "light up his e-mail" at