It’s Whining Time Again

February 25, 2010

Someone call a wahmbulance. Connecticut’s local-government pols think Governor M. Jodi Rell is being mean to them.

By canceling both the January and February meetings of the State Bond Commission, Rell delayed the flow of road-improvement funds to cities and towns.

“Unbelievable,” fumed Plainfield First Selectman Paul Sweet. “It’s just a very disappointing time to be in government.”

Please. It’s taxpayers who should be disappointed -- if anything, the governor’s treatment of municipalities during the Great Recession has been far too generous. Rell’s proposed spending plan for the next fiscal year is a prime example. Grants for schools and libraries, reimbursement for nontaxable state-owned property, and dozens of other subsidies to local governments make up about 15 percent of the budget. Even the taxpayer-funded Connecticut Conference of Municipalities admits that the governor seeks a mere 0.43 percent cut in this hefty expense category.

Of course, intergovernmental revenue doesn’t emanate from Hartford alone. The “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” continues to deliver the dough. Earlier this month Rell ladled $6.7 million from the federal treasury into the coffers of 121 small and medium-size towns for what are said to be energy-efficiency projects. Middlesex County is using “stimulus” support for its “10 Year Plan to End Homelessness.” Danbury’s doing bridge work and street-paving. Bridgeport is getting almost $5 million to pay for 20 new police officers. Tens of millions of dollars will be spent on drinking-water projects in Ridgefield, Brookfield, Norwich, East Lyme, and seven other communities.

With neither the state nor Washington demanding frugality, bureaucrats at the local level have no reason to accept fiscal truths. The superintendent of New Britain’s schools requested a budget hike of 22 percent for 2011. (At 7 percent, East Windsor’s top educrat was much more “reasonable.”) Ansonia’s Board of Aldermen has approved an 8.4 percent tax increase. Bristol is borrowing $7.4 million to cover expenses incurred by the doomed-to-fail “redevelopment” of its downtown mall. Stamford has hired a “communications and marketing manager” for its new mayor. (Between 2000 and 2008, private-sector jobs in Connecticut increased by 0.3 percent. For local government, growth exceeded 10 percent.)

Compensation concessions have been negotiated with union bosses here and there, but pay hikes remain the norm. The Chronicle’s Caitlin M. Dineen reports that over the next three years, the salary of Regional School District 19’s principal will rise by nearly $10,000, as will pay for the “director of special services.” Vice principals will get nearly $9,000 more. (At $7,161, the full-time athletic director brings up the rear.) Two weeks ago, Old Lyme’s police officers won a contract extension that guarantees raises for five years in a row.

What we see is bad. What’s coming is worse. No obligation better demonstrates municipalities’ boneheaded budgeting better than other post-employment benefits (OPEB). Local governments do a far better job than the state in setting aside revenue for the extravagant defined-benefit pensions they provide. But to date, few have begun to pre-fund the non-pension benefits, including healthcare and life insurance, promised to members of their retirement systems.

Several years ago, the Norwalk-based Governmental Accounting Standards Board mandated disclosure of OPEB liabilities. For the state’s 10 largest cities, the amounts are massive:

• Bridgeport: $875 million

• Hartford: $373 million

• New Haven: $430 million

• Stamford: $215 million

• Waterbury: $770 million

• Norwalk $188 million

• Danbury: $102 million

• New Britain: $43 million

• Greenwich: $42 million

• Bristol: $72 million

Think unmet commitments are limited to the state’s corrupt and ineptly run big cities? Smaller -- and tonier -- towns have OPEB worries, too. Westport’s bill is $50 million. Suffield taxpayers bear a burden of $22 million.

OPEB assessments do not contain the contractually enforced “payouts” public employees often receive for stored-up paid leave. A 2005 investigation by the Republican-American found that Waterbury’s retiring teachers “are owed an average of $38,542 for unused sick days.” Milford budgets over $800,000 for payouts to the usual 18 teachers who retire every year -- an average of over $44,000. Last year, New Haven’s “Blue Ribbon Budget Review Panel” pressed the city’s controller for an estimate on the liability for “banked” sick days. His guess: $28 million.

In the past, crying poverty has reliably secured Connecticut’s municipalities more funding. Without a remarkably rapid recovery of the state’s economy and/or another Washington pork-fest, this time their whining won’t work. A better approach would be a bold examination of the compensation packages they offer employees and a cost-cutting reorientation toward local government’s core duties.

D. Dowd Muska is a writer, commentator and lecturer. His website is www.dowdmuska.com.

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