By Keith M. Phaneuf
Just days after a landmark state court ruling found Connecticut’s education funding system to be “irrational and unconstitutional,” the chief lobbying group for cities and towns today issued a new research paper calling the municipal property tax system “unsustainable.”
The report from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities urges state legislators to take several steps, including expanding the variety of taxes communities can collect and committing to promised sharing of state sales tax receipts despite big projected deficit in the next state budget.
“It is increasingly clear that relying on the property tax to fund local government services in Connecticut is unsustainable,” the report states. “… Connecticut’s towns and cities rely on the property tax to fund the majority of local services. It is basically ‘the only game in town.’”
The property tax is the chief revenue source for most municipalities, with 71 percent, on average, coming from property taxpayers. The second-largest source of funding is state grants. Using those funds, cities and towns provide a wide array of services including elementary and secondary education; public safety; infrastructure maintenance; recreation, and social services.
