‘Pie and Politics’ Session Features Budget Slicing Talk

On the eve of the opening of this year’s legislative session in Hartford, the League of Women Voters of Westport tonight hosted a two-hour “Pie and Politics” pizza session at the Veterans of of Foreign Wars Post in Westport attended by about 30 persons. The town’s four state representatives—Sens. Toni Boucher, Tony Hwang, and Reps. Jonathan Steinberg and Gail Lavielle —agreed that the session would be different since for the first time since 1893, Republicans and Democrats hold equal number of seats in the State Senate. They also unanimously condemned the cut in state education aid to Westport midway through the fiscal year and promised to work to free the town from costly state education mandates. “It’s ridiculous to have to use some (state-mandated) software system,”  said Steinberg, citing one example. “It doesn’t make sense at all.”  Said Hwang of the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) state aid sytem: “No forumula, no predicability, no transparency.” (CLICK TO ENLARGE) WestportNow.com photo