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Games Municipal Politicians Play November 13, 2008 Connecticut’s municipal politicians are panicking. With the state facing billion-dollar, blood-red budgets for years to come, they fear that subsidies from Hartford will soon dwindle. It’s a reasonable assumption. Local-government “aid” comprises a big chunk of cities’ and towns’ budgets -- the former much more than the latter. The municipal-spending lobby, with teacher unions usually walking point, is accustomed to looting a huge share of the state’s annual revenue. (The main subsidy to government-school districts is just under $2 billion. Even for Connecticut’s public sector, that’s no small sum.) But this dependence on state generosity is risky. When Connecticut’s fisc suffers and lawmakers consider cuts, the panoply of handouts to local government is an appealing target. The script won’t change this time -- it never does. Mayors, town councilors, city alderman, representative town meeting members, and selectmen will wail that due to prior stinginess by the state, as well as rising employee-benefit costs and poor economic conditions, there’s no way they can accept smaller checks from Hartford. After all, they’ve already “cut to the bone,” taking draconian actions that unquestionably hurt “the children.” But it’s difficult to reconcile municipal pols’ spin with recent headlines about local government. In the last few months, school superintendents in East Lyme, Stonington, and Manchester have received raises. (Trumbull’s Ralph Iassogna got a pay hike, too, but the PR-savvy super pledged to donate his to the Trumbull High School Scholarship Foundation. Iassogna will have to survive, somehow, on $185,658 a year.) Other lucky educrats include 36 Bridgeport School District administrators. In October, they got 3 percent raises -- just a bit under the 3.5 percent increase given to the system’s superintendent earlier in the year. (His salary is now $222,507.) In September, the Stamford Board of Representatives awarded 27 city administrators raises that ranged from 3 to 26 percent. (The board also created a “step” system to lock in future increases.) Last month, Enfield’s councilors voted to give their town manager two retroactive pay hikes. The director of Wallingford’s housing authority recently got a raise -- he now makes more than the town’s mayor. September saw Manchester’s board of education hire a “community relations coordinator” (salary: $85,000) who previously served as a flack for the state’s education bureaucracy. (“We can never do enough work to promote our schools and promote the good things that are happening every day in our schools,” Board of Education Chairwoman Margaret H. Hackett explained.) In October, Tolland’s school board chose to make its accountant full-time, even though the district already has a business manager. The Elm City is considering the creation of a new job, the “legal counsel to the Economic Development office.” The New Haven Register reports that it is a “$100,000-plus position.” Griswold just created the full-time position of highway superintendent. Before you ask, not one of these pay hikes and new hires was mandated by the state. Nor were any required by legally binding union contracts. The decisions were voluntarily made -- often unanimously -- by local legislative bodies that are just as culpable for the state’s system-wide fiscal implosion as profligate governors and spendthrift lawmakers. Further evidence of municipal-government myopia comes from the proposals put to voters last week by eager-to-spend pols. A few referenda, including a library renovation in Farmington and road, school, and library bonds in East Hartford, won approval. Most measures did not, including: * a $117 million school-renovation plan in South Windsor * a $13 million library expansion in Madison * a new, $250,000 “chief operating officer” position in Bristol * a $4.5 million public-works building in Coventry * a $71 million school renovation/construction project in Rocky Hill * a $7 million renovation of Southington’s town hall * an $8.9 million expansion and upgrade of New Hartford’s sewer system * pay raises for the members of Manchester’s Board of Directors In these scary economic times, voters in “blue” Connecticut appear more willing to tighten government’s belt than the officials they elect at the local level. It’s no surprise that the primary policies municipal “leaders” have proffered to address sagging subsidies from Hartford have nothing to do with spending restraint. To them, raiding the state’s “rainy day” fund, grabbing the bulk of federal cash that is on its way, and floating loans are preferable to kicking their addiction to Big Government. Sadly, Connecticut’s voters didn’t “throw the bums out” of state government in 2008. In 2009, perhaps they’ll perform a badly needed housecleaning at the municipal level. D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com. # # # # #
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