nothin Malloy Slams City After All | New Haven Independent

Malloy Slams City After All

Christine Stuart Photo

Malloy & the mayors after union vote, before the city whack.

After promising to shield New Haven in round one of his last-minute budget cuts, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy now proposes to send New Haven a new $5 million-plus hit — and a move to stop him has begun.

The first showdown takes place in Hartford on Thursday.

That’s when the legislature takes up Malloy’s request to give him emergency powers to cut municipal aid for the budget that takes effect Friday.

Malloy had hoped to avoid those cuts by getting $1.6 billion in concessions over two years from state unions. State union leaders agreed to that deal — but then failed to convince enough of their members to support the deal for it to take effect. (Read about that here.) As a result, Malloy has to make 11th-hour budget cuts to keep the two-year $40.11 billion budget balanced.

On Wednesday his office released his plan for the first chunk of those cuts, in municipal aid. If the legislature says he can do it.

New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar, for one, doesn’t want to give him that permission.

I find the governor’s power grab to be inappropriate, first and foremost, but beyond that, the cuts that he has outlined are devastating to cities and towns and to many of the most important services we provide as a state,” Lemar said.

Click here to read a town-by-town breakdown.

Malloy’s chart of town-by-town cuts released Wednesday included a $2.4 million drop for New Haven. That would cover statutory” cuts: to payment in lieu of taxes reimbursements for college and hospital and state-owned properties in town, plus about $300,000 in road construction money.

That covers less than half of the overall cuts Malloy is making as part of his post-union deal Plan B.” A second big chunk are to include some $7 million in interdistrict cooperative school spending and $4 million for magnet schools.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano noted that New Haven has the state’s biggest interdistrict program. (More suburbanites attend New Haven schools than any other city schools.) And it has a fleet of magnets. So New Haven will be hit hardest by those cuts, he predicted.

Malloy’s staff has yet to delineate the town-by-town impact of those cuts yet the way it has with the statutory aid. DeStefano’s staff projects that those cuts will probably mean New Haven’s new cuts will add up to $5 million to $7 million.

Just last Friday, after the stunning torpedoing of Malloy’s concession plan, the governor assured DeStefano and other mayors that cities wouldn’t feel much of the sting of new cuts until the second year of the budget.

As it turns out, that wasn’t the case,” DeStefano said Wednesday.

Though disappointed by the numbers released Wednesday, DeStefano made sure to note that Malloy, a former Stamford mayor, has been very supportive of municipal budgets” process overall.

He also noted that a third indirect effect of Malloy’s cuts will disproportionately hurt New Haven even more: The layoffs of correctional and mental health workers will put new strain on supportive housing developments — the alternatives to homeless shelters that New Haven been pioneering — and on efforts to work with the reentry population.” The latter is bureaucratic lingo for the estimated 25 felons who show up on New Haven streets every week after state prisons release them.

DeStefano said he hopes a way can be found to reverse the rules by which state unions rejected the concessions deal. (A majority of workers supported the deal, but didn’t reach an 80 percent threshold required under current rules.) Meanwhile, DeStefano said he hopes legislators reject the municipal rescission request and openly debate the impacts of Malloy’s other cuts. He noted that any rollback in dealing with felons reentering society or potentially homeless people dealing with addiction, for instance, will hurt not only those individuals but the neighbors who live near them.

It’s very important that any of these cuts face public discussion so people understand the choices,” DeStefano said.

Meanwhile, the mayor last week directed his staff to draw up a plan for possible budget options to fill a gap that would rise as high as $10 million from state cuts.

State Rep. Lemar called it an abdication” of lawmakers’ role to punt on municipal rescission authority. I’d rather take the time to make smart cuts and take ownership of them,” he said. His proposal will likely lead the towns I represent to consider layoffs, service reductions or supplemental tax bills.”

Paul Bass File Photo

Spokeswoman Flanagan, Gov. Malloy at the mansion when budget skies looked clearer in early May.

Gubernatorial spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan defended the new proposed cuts.

To be clear, this is not [Malloy’s] first choice. He was working as hard as he could and hoping as much as he could that this wouldn’t be the path that would head down. He’s doing the best he can in a very difficult situation,” Flanagan said.

None of these decisions are easy ones, but they’re necessary. He understands cities like New Haven are already having a difficult time balancing their budgets.”

In New Haven, the mayor has his own ongoing battle with government unions. His administration has been locked in tough negotiations with 11 different units over possible health care and pension givebacks and changes in work rules. Those union contracts are expected to expire this week, and a number are expected to end up in arbitration. The city’s new budget depends on the administration succeeding in obtaining $8 million worth of concessions during the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Union presidents have been meeting with DeStefano since late last week to chart the discouraging developments in Hartford. The acrimonious tone between the two sides in town, at least, seems to have softened, as leaders on both sides said they realize the state budget mess leaves the two sides back at home facing a similar new financial challenge.

Paul Bass File Photo

Union chiefs (from left) Ron Hobson, Cherlyn Poindexter, Robert Montuori.

This does not help cities or other workers,” Robert Montuori, president of the custodians union, AFSCME Local 287. His union has been at odds with City Hall over a plan to privatize custodians’ jobs.

Obviously he’s going to need some kind of concessions from us. From everyone,” Montuori said Wednesday. You’re going to do concessions in these times or you’re going to suffer mass layoffs.”

We’re hoping some dialogue comes from this. We can meet in an agreeable middle. The bargaining units and the cities are going to have to understand there’s concessions coming, as long as we’re fair about them,” Montuori said.

He expressed dismay that his counterparts at the state level failed to ratify Malloy’s offer last week: What the governor was offering the state workers was more than fair.”

Click here to read interviews with state workers about why they voted no.

Local 884 President Ronald Hobson, on the other hand, said Wednesday that he doesn’t see the state developments changing the local calculus. He said he believes his unit’s contract will still end up in arbitration, most of all because of a proposal to hike deductibles into one of the health plans.

We knew it was going to trickle down. He’s [DeStefano’s] trying to get blood out of a rock,” claimed Hobson, whose local represents around 500 police dispatchers and assistants, school security officers and nurses, and Board of Ed secretaries, among others.

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