FOR THOSE THAT NOT HAD THE CHANCE YET TO CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW PLEASE DO SO AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. LETS MAKE A BIG PUSH OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS GOING INTO THE WEEK
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Legislative Alert
The Connecticut House of Representatives may be voting on a solution to fix the Special Transportation Fund as early as next week. Use this link https://www.votervoice.net/CCIA/campaigns/58617/respond
to call your State Representative tell them to vote in favor of using the existing car sales tax to fix the funding shortfall in the Special Transportation Fund.
Make the call. Leave a message. $4.3 billion of projects are at stake! Please forward this message to as many people in your organization as possible!Getting There: Blame Legislature if fare hikes, service cuts take effect
By Jim CameronI’ve been writing for weeks about the profound impact the state Department of Transportation’s impending bus and rail service cuts and fare hikes will have on commuters, local businesses and real estate values.
But with just weeks to go, the folks who can prevent this pain — the state Legislature — appears to be doing nothing.
The proposed cuts will go into effect July 1. A 10 percent fare hike on Metro-North will be coupled with the elimination of off-peak trains on the New Canaan, Danbury and Waterbury branch lines as well as Shore Line East.
How are local officials responding? By complaining the proposed cuts are not fair.
“Don’t cut my mass transit, cut someone else’s,” they seem to cry. “Why is my bus service being cut, but Hartford and Stamford’s isn’t?,” one official asked me.
I told him he was asking the wrong question. Instead, he should ask why any bus or train service was being cut.
It’s as if a crowd was trapped in a burning building with one narrow fire escape and everyone’s screaming: “I deserve to survive. Let the others get burned,” while nobody is working to douse the flames.
The answer isn’t to push away the pain onto others, but to turn off the pain at its source.
Legislators can easily stop the state DOT’s plans by just raising the gasoline tax four cents a gallon and diverting the car sales tax into the Special Transportation Fund. Instead, they’re blaming everyone but themselves for the mess they created.
Remember: It was the legislature that pandered to voters in 1997 by lowering the gasoline tax 14 cents a gallon, a move that cost the STF $3.4 billion in lost transportation spending that could have repaired roads and fixed bridges.
Now the Republicans are so focused on the fall campaign they’re deceiving voters in a PR move only Sean Spicer could enjoy: Arguing the proposed highway tolls are “taxes.”
They are not. Tolls would be a user fee, paid only by those who drive on those roads. Train fares aren’t taxes, are they? You only pay those fares if you take the train.
Do Republicans really think voters are that stupid? Apparently so.
The pols are also piling on the state DOT for being late in opening the new Hartford Line, the commuter rail line between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield, Mass. Our Legislature can’t even deliver a budget on time, let alone understand the complexity of a $769 million railroad construction project that’s taken more than a decade.
It’s not by chance the Republicans are known as the “party of no.” For all their complaining, they have offered no new ideas or embraced the ones that thoughtful observers think are obvious: Asking motorists to pay their fair share with gasoline taxes and tolls.
Metro-North riders already pay the highest commuter rail fares in the U.S., fares that have risen 53 percent since 2000, while motorists haven’t seen a gas tax increase in 20 years. How is that fair?
If the July 1 service cuts and fare hikes go into effect, commuters should know it’s their Legislature that’s to blame.
Construction project to close section of Curtiss Street in Southington during mornings, afternoons
SOUTHINGTON — An ongoing construction project will close a section of Curtiss Street to traffic during mornings and afternoons for the next several weeks.
Beginning on Tuesday, Curtiss Street will be closed between Hart Street and Little Fawn Road between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Traffic will be detoured onto Hart Street, and Riverside Court residents will need to turn left onto Curtiss Street when leaving the neighborhood.
Traffic delays can be expected and police have advised motorists to avoid the area.
Baltic Mill, planned for renovation, badly damaged by fire
Stephanie Menders
SPRAGUE – A week after town residents and officials heard proposals about how to use the old Baltic Mill, the building partially collapsed from a four-alarm fire on Monday afternoon.
No injuries were reported, officials said. Nineteen crews responded to the structure fire.
Baltic Fire Chief Bob Tardif said the fire began as construction crews were working to take down a portion of the building and cutting pipes. Once the fire began, “the wind took it off,” he said. The wind also blew embers into nearby grassy areas that caught fire, he said.
“Our mutual aid did a good job keeping that in check,” the chief said.
Tardif also said asbestos had been removed from the building recently and construction workers had been attempting to salvage remnants from the building.
Flames were visible from the structure and portions of the building could be heard collapsing several times throughout the hours it took for crews to take down the blaze.
“But I’m not sure what’s salvageable now,” he said.
Last week, UConn students offered proposals for renovating the site into a mixed-use development that would offer up housing, restaurants and commercial space. First Selectwoman Cathy Osten said she planned to include those plans as part of a Request for Proposal slated to go out later this year. The town owns the 17-acre property through a 2007 tax foreclosure, and has put over $1 million into cleaning it up in recent years. The site, and surrounding village, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Dozens of residents on Monday flocked to the downtown area of Main Street, which provided a view of the burning mill from across the Shetucket River. Lifetime Baltic resident Brenda Maerkle, 23, watched the fire with her mother Karen Maerkle.
The mother and daughter said they remember when the mill first went up in flames in 1999- a blaze that nearly destroyed the former home to the Western Hemisphere’s largest cotton mill. That fire was subsequently ruled arson.
“I was just a little kid then, but I remember the smoke,” Brenda Maerkle said. “This is completely shocking. This isn’t something you think you’ll see again in your lifetime. Especially it being the same building.”
Atwood Hose, Baltic, East Great Plains, Franklin, Gardner Lake, Jewett City, Lisbon, Norwich, Salem, Scotland, Taftville, Willimantic, Yantic fire departments were at the scene, with more arriving by the minute.
Still, leaders from both parties remained optimistic Friday, shortly after the competing proposals were unveiled, that an agreement could be reached before the legislative session ends on May 9.
"Despite facing obvious election year tactics," House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said, Democratic legislators "were able to put forth budget adjustments that reflect the values and needs of the people we serve. We now have a firm basis to work from, and we all share the responsibility of making adjustments to the bipartisan budget, so that is what we will continue to work toward in the coming weeks."
"We welcome any and all budget ideas," House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said, adding that she hopes the legislature will move "closer to adopting an updated fiscal year 2019 budget that is balanced, that protects funding for core services, that creates stability and predictability for our state, and that avoids the devastating cuts and tax increases proposed by the governor."
Back in early February, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy offered his own plan to close a modest hole in the preliminary 2018-19 budget legislators adopted — while excluding his administration from negotiations — last October.
Malloy avoided any major tax hikes but did recommend: eliminating a middle-class income tax credit; boosting cigarette, hotel and real estate conveyance taxes; and closing a sales tax exemption for over-the-counter medications.
The prospect that legislators from either party would vote to raise taxes in a state election year was slim — despite a projected deficit of $265 million in the preliminary budget for the upcoming fiscal year — even before state income tax receipts began to surge earlier this year.
But with the legislature's nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis reporting Monday that income tax receipts tied to capital gains and other investment earnings were running $1.09 billion ahead of expectations this fiscal year, the chances of tax hikes went from slim to nil.
Battling over revenues, across-the-board cuts
Still, revenues remain a key point of contention between the two parties.
The Republican plan would spend $20.4 billion while Democrats would spend almost $470 million more at nearly $20.9 billion.
The GOP notes their plan cuts spending 0.7 percent compared with the preliminary 2018-19 budget, while the Democratic version not only boosts spending 2.1 percent, it exceeds the new state spending cap by $31 million.
The Democrats' proposal also exceeds projected revenues for the next fiscal year — based on the last official forecast, produced in mid-January — by about $400 million.
Even if this spring's projected income tax bonanza holds up, Republicans said Friday, it remains to be seen whether analysts will project similar growth for next year.
A significant portion of this year's extra revenues are attributed to two trends that probably won't repeat:
Extra state income tax payments Connecticut residents made in December 2017 to take advantage for one last time of favorable-yet-expiring federal income tax rules.
And a rush of capital gains taken by Connecticut households earlier this spring as the stock market underwent a significant correction.
If analysts don't believe this spring's income tax bonanza will happen again 12 months from now, Democrats could plug the hole in their plan by using some of this year's surplus. But that would require suspending a new initiative legislators adopted last October to force Connecticut to save these types of surpluses, and not spend them.
GOP lawmakers said Friday that the Democratic budget ultimately would lead to tax increases, either this spring or after the fall election.
Democrats counter that one of the Republicans' chief methods to keep spending down is dangerously misleading. The GOP applied cuts of 5 to 7 percent to many agency budgets. And though it isn't immediately clear just how many programs that would influence — and how severely — Democratic legislators said the affect of those cuts usually are understood too late, after they've been imposed.
Controversy over cutting labor costs
Democrats counter that the Republican plan has some questionable fiscal logic of its own.
The GOP says its OK to tap this spring's income tax bonanza — about two-thirds of it, or $650 million to $700 million — as long as those funds are deposited into the state's cash-starved pension programs.
Still, the Republican plan uses those deposits to justify taking about $40 million out of the original pension contribution line items, and shifting those dollars to spend on other programs.
Democrats also don't like an idea the GOP first offered last year and revived in its latest plan: cutting labor costs a decade down the road but claiming some of the savings now.
Specifically, Republicans proposed restricting state employee pension benefits starting in mid-2027 — after the current contract expires — but reaping $61.7 million in savings now. Democratic legislators, Malloy and union leaders all have called this strategy illegal.
"This sets us up for another lawsuit," said Sen. Cathy Osten of Sprague, Senate Democratic chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. "Are we taking money … from something that happens in nine years? It's not real savings."
Key differences: transportation and higher ed
The two parties also assign different priorities to transportation and higher education.
Democrats devote $26 million more to the Special Transportation Fund than Republicans did, nearly matching the resources Malloy sought.
Malloy has been warning since November that the fund is headed for insolvency.
Absent more funding, the state would need later this year to scrap some rail services, drive up fares, and suspend 40 percent of planned capital projects worth about $4.3 billion in construction activity — including major highway projects such as rebuilding the Hartford viaduct, the Malloy administration says.
A huge divide remains over how the parties would fund higher education.
The Republican budget targets the University of Connecticut for a $37 million cut – an 11 percent reduction. The UConn Health Center would lose $29 million – a 15 percent cut. These cuts are on top of similarly large cuts imposed over the previous two fiscal years.
To help achieve these steep cuts, the Republicans propose requiring professors to teach one more course each semester and requiring the health center to privatize services by next fiscal year and realize more savings than initially expected from from the fact that the health center will no longer be managing health care for inmates in state custody.
The Republican budget also would cut the state's other college system that operates four regional Connecticut state universities and 12 community colleges by $18.4 million – a 5 percent cut over what the Board of Regents is slated to receive this year.
About half of those savings would be realized by ending state funding to help the colleges pay for instructors and other costs related to providing non-credit courses to prepare students for college-level courses. The remaining half would come mostly from the state universities.
The Democrat's budget is more favorable to the state's colleges.
The community college would receive a $16.2 million boost in state funding – but that is to make up for the expected increase in costs for fringe and retirement health benefits that the system must cover. The other state universities and UConn Health face the same increases in fringe costs, but neither the Democrat nor Republican budget provides help to mediate the increase.
The Democrats flat-fund UConn otherwise and cut the Health Center by $2.5 million to realize additional savings from the center's no longer managing health care for inmates.
The state universities would see an increase of $4.1 million from what they are expected to receive this year while the community colleges would lose $3.5 million. Separate from these changes, the budget would launch a new $5 million initiative – "Free 2 Start" – that would help students pay for college. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Inspector General Probes Interior Department's Handling Of Connecticut Casino Expansion
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s inspector general is probing the department’s decision to take no action on amendments to long-standing tribal casino revenue-sharing agreements with the state of Connecticut, an Interior spokeswoman confirmed Monday.The failure to render a decision has placed a legal roadblock in the efforts to establish the state’s first commercial casino in East Windsor. The state’s third casino is aimed at blunting the competitive impact on Connecticut of MGM Resorts International’s $960 million casino and entertainment complex in Springfield, which is scheduled to open in September.
The amendments were required by the legislature last year as a condition of the approval allowing the operators of Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun to jointly establish the East Windsor casino, the first off a tribal reservation.
On Sunday, Politico reported that Trump administration officials rejected recommendations from staff members for an approval, leading to the delay.
Citing documents obtained under a Freedom of Information request, Politico said “career staffers were circulating what they labeled ‘approval letters’ just 48 hours before their political bosses reversed course” and refused to either approve or reject the amendments.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn, said Monday the investigation gives the matter a “great deal of weight.”“The investigation is a significant breakthrough in the Department of the Interior’s stonewalling and possible conflict of interest,” Blumenthal told The Courant. “They failed to act in the best interest of the tribes and that is their obligation. They are blatantly breaking that obligation which is a matter of trust and law.”
Blumenthal was one of four members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation who requested an investigation in February into the lack of a decision by the department and its secretary, Ryan Zinke. The others were Sen. Chris Murphy and Reps. John Larson and Joe Courtney.
The political maneuvering also is raising questions about intensive lobbying at the Interior Department by MGM, an issue raised by the federal lawmakers from Connecticut. They also have complained they had no access to the department or Zinke, but MGM and federal lawmakers from Nevada did.
The Interior Department opened the investigation soon after the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation pressed for the federal probe, said Nancy DiPaolo, a spokeswoman for Interior’s inspector general.The investigation could take “months” and a decision is not imminent, DiPaolo said.
The tribes’ revenue-sharing agreements with the state — dating back to the early 1990s — guarantee monthly payments to the state as long as the tribes have the exclusive right to operate video slot machines in Connecticut.
The amendments were needed because the tribes had formed a joint venture to establish the East Windsor casino and not individually. The original agreements, or “compacts,” were signed separately with each tribe.
Although the Department of the Interior had given informal signals early on it didn’t anticipate problems, it subsequently took no action. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE