New Haven Independent

At a legislative breakfast Friday sponsored by the Branford Chamber of Commerce at the Holiday Inn Express, Meyer was blunt in answering a question posed by RTM member Lonnie Reed, chair of the RTM’s education committee. She wanted to know the timeline for handling property tax reform in a substantial way.

The reason, she noted, is that the property tax virtually subsidizes public school education in town. That is because the state’s Education Cost Saving formula (ECS) is inequitable in its distributions to many towns, including Branford. Meyer said that towns like Branford contribute to the state a large amount of income and sales tax revenues and get “only 5 percent of their school costs.”

“Lonnie,” he said, “I have become a cynic on the subject. I think for the communities I represent, including Pat’s [Widlitz] and Peter’s [Panaroni’s] Assembly districts [Guilford and Branford respectively], I think property taxes are our worst problem. I think they are affecting terribly older people and younger people; they are leading to horrible land choice decisions because of communities that are property tax starved. In a column I wrote recently I called for a phasing out of the property tax and replacement by a local income tax. But we have a legislature that is very timid about this.

“And when we talk about property tax reform we kind of nibble at the edge; we have a property tax credit, but in terms of real reform, we are followers, we are not leaders in this.” He spoke before an audience of about 50 people that included Second Selectman Fran Walsh, Schools Superintendent Dr. Kathleen Clark Halligan, various town department heads and members of the business community.

Republican Gov. Jodi Rell, has, in fact, sought to be a leader in property tax reform. But, she, too, has run into trouble. In her February 7th State of the State address, she once again advocated for enactment of a property tax cap.

“Homeowners, business owners and car owners are struggling under the weight of property taxes. They want relief — real relief. I ask you to work with me to design a cap that we all find workable.

Gov. Rell noted that a property tax cap has been implemented in 43 other states. “It can and will work here.”

The only way it can work is if the legislature adopts it. And given that in even years, the legislature works only four short months, well, no one is optimistic. The attitude: “It’s a short session.”

Last year Rell pushed for adoption of her Education Finance Commission’s final report, which would increase public school funding by more than $1.25 billion phased if over four years . But that didn’t happen though some towns did receive higher education grants.

Meyer said that “twenty years ago there was a commitment that the state would pick up 50 percent of the cost of the schools. Today on average it is 38 percent; not even near 50 percent.” In Branford it is 5 percent, he said. The proposed $46.83 million school budget for the 2008-09 year represents about 60 percent of the town’s total budget.

The ECS is also at the center of a lawsuit filed in Hartford Superior Court by the Connecticut Coaltion for Justice in Education Funding (“CCJEF v.Rell”). The lawsuit, overseen by the Yale Law School Education Adequacy Clinic, argues the ECS grants have not been fully funded by the state even though they are required to be.

Dianne deVries, the project director of CCJEF, told the Eagle: “After taking inflation into account, Branford and thirty percent of all Connecticut towns today receive less than the $250 per pupil flat grant that all towns received prior to the 1977 Horton v Meskill decision.” In Horton v Meskill the state was ordered to equalize education spending.

Last year Hartford Superior Court Judge Joseph Shortall gutted the current complaint, leaving only one issue to litigate. His ruling has been appealed directly to the State Supreme Court, where oral arguments are expected this spring.

Frank Carrano, the chairman of the Branford Board of Education, who also serves as the chair of the town’s Democratic Town Committee, said he had become disillusioned. “I don’t see this issue being resolved, not in my lifetime.” Carrano said he thought that a Commission designed to study the system might help.

Meyer said there had been any number of commissions that have studied property taxes and educational funding, the two topics joined at the hip for small towns and large cities. “The commissions do their work,” Meyer said, but then nothing happens.

In October 2003, a Blue Ribbon Commission appointed by the legislature was highly critical of the state’s over-reliance on property taxes to fund education. The commission’s report said that Connecticut is more reliant than any other state on property taxes to finance K-12 education. Chaired by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., the panel said the property tax is regressive, is not an accurate measure of wealth and does not correlate with a property owner’s ability to pay. It called for a massive overhaul of the property tax system.

Meyer told the audience that the foreseeable future shows the large cities getting thousands of dollars per pupil and the towns getting virtually nothing. “It will be 70 percent New Haven, 5 percent the towns for the rest of our lives.”

Last year a coalition of Branford educators visited Hartford in an effort to make inroads on changing the system.

Reed said she would be back in Hartford this year. In an interview afterward, she said:
“Year after year, the same problems get bigger. Fixed income seniors are forced to sell their homes; communities reluctantly develop some precious open spaces because they are strapped for revenue; unfunded mandates and other spiking costs make our town residents dig deeper to pay local public school bills despite the fact that every year, Branford citizens and businesses send Hartford a fortune in incomes and sales taxes.

“It is so clear that top-down initiatives don’t work,” she said, referring to the various Governor’s commissions and blue-ribbon panels that spend years gathering information only to recommend reforms that “immediately drop dead,” Reed said.

Reed suggested that property tax reform requires a ground-up approach,” meaning that Branford must team up with other like-minded communities and join forces with organizations such as 1000 Friends of Connecticut and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. “We have got to organize, get on busses, head to Hartford, make our case and keep the pressure on until our voices are heard. The legislators who are in our corner admit they are powerless to get this done without us. That’s the unvarnished truth of the matter.”

Meyer agreed with this approach. Widlitz told the group that she and her fellow legislators do advocate for small towns, but she noted “there is a lot of emphasis on the cities. As it should be,” she observed. Peter Panaroni, who represents Branford in the General Assembly, did not comment because he had left for a doctor’s appointment just before the discussion began on property taxes.

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