By Keith M. Phaneuf
UPDATE Gov. Dannel P. Malloy today unveiled a plan to ease mandates on cities and towns, led by elimination of a controversial cap on local budgets.
The governor, who is expected next week to recommend a major realignment of aid from wealthier to poorer communities, also proposed: changes to collective bargaining, tightening of prevailing wage standards, granting more flexibility in local property assessment rates and eliminating a requirement for a superintendent in small school districts.
“True partnerships are built on listening to the concerns and responding to the needs of the other party,” Malloy said. “Given the challenges we face in balancing the budget in the next biennium, the state and local municipalities must continue to strengthen our working partnership — and in some respects, begin to redefine this relationship.”
Local cities and towns have complained loudly over the past two years since the legislature established a cap system, with financial penalties when local spending exceeds certain limits.
The cap was supposed to complement a 2015 plan to share state sales tax receipts with cities and towns, but legislators have scaled back that revenue-sharing plan since its enactment.
The governor’s new proposals also echo some of the collective bargaining changes proposed last week by the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.
Malloy’s plan, like CCM’s, would amend collective bargaining rules regarding binding arbitration — a process cities and towns routinely go through each year to settle compensation for teachers, police officers, public works staff and other unionized employees.
Specifically the governor would exempt any increased state aid to cities and towns in 2017 from the arbitration review process. In other words, an arbiter could not weigh those grants when assessing a community’s ability to afford worker raises.
Administration officials already have hinted the only communities likely to receive additional funding next fiscal year would be Connecticut’s poorest ones.
Nonpartisan analysts say state finances, unless adjusted, are on pace to run $1.4 billion in deficit next fiscal year, a gap of about 8 percent. And Malloy’s budget chief, Ben Barnes, has said it would probably be necessary to reduce overall municipal aid next fiscal year, particularly if the administration cannot secure major concessions from state employee labor unions.
