It may not come as a shock that State Senator Len Fasano is against tolls in Connecticut, but the Senate Minority Leader also voiced approval of shared services and concerns about PILOT on the latest episode of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities’ “The Municipal Voice” program on WNHH FM.
“There are already a lot of shared services that go on,” Fasano noted. One example he mentioned is cooperation among towns on purchasing without any formal structure – one town buys this truck, that town buys another truck with the idea that they’ll be available to each other.
He also said that there are no statutes that prevent towns from sharing services, but there are definitely hurdles to jump: “We can probably share police and fire, but who is going to be the politician that says, ‘I’m going to get rid of the firehouse’?”
Fasano went on to say that with the populations of schools decreasing, there might be some appetite to look at school regionalization, but that might be an even tougher sell. He did not say if that would look like the plan that State Sen. Martin Looney Looney put forward earlier this year.
Fasaon also agreed with State Sen. Cathy Osten, who appeared on “The Municipal Voice” earlier this year, on revenue diversification. Both agreed that instead of new areas of revenue, municipalities should be fighting for their fair share of the payments-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) among other sources.
“Town budgets are lean for the most part; they do a lot with less,” he said. “But PILOT is one of those promises. [The state] promised 70 percent of PILOT, but only pay 40% [to municipalities].”
Cost containment is where he believes that a majority of savings will come from, helping the state, and in turn, the municipalities. The senator suggested that the state hire an outside company to look at how many of our services run, much like many private sector companies do.
Between the Department of Social Services, Department of Transportation, and the Department of Motor Vehicles, which he called out by name, “there’s a lot that can be trimmed.”
He said that these departments should be more agile and move into obvious partnerships with private businesses that already fulfill similar tasks. He asked why can’t people register their cars at the dealership, why people can’t fill some forms out online to reduce phone waiting times, or why the state won’t work with some insurance companies.
This is especially true of quasi-governmental agencies like the Port Authority and the Lottery. While they were created with “good intentions,” they “no longer look like they were supposed to” due to lack of oversight, added costs, bad contracts and more, he argued.
On the issues of Tweed runway expansion and tolls, Senator Fasano has frequently made his positions clear.
He maintaineds that his transportation plans, which involve taking money from the rainy day fund, don’t make the state any more susceptible to a recession should one hit than it was any other year.
For Fasano, it’s actually the only plan that makes sense if the economy takes a downturn in the coming years before the governor’s plan has time to take effect.
He said he fears his ideas won’t be taken seriously simply because they’re Republican ideas, which are anathema in the current Connecticut climate. With elections looming next year, tolls may be the issue to happily prove him otherwise.
Every state on the Eastern Seaboard from Maryland to Maine charges interstate drivers to use its highways. What a strange way for revenue-starved Connecticut to distinguish ourselves.... Mr. Fasano, are all those states crazy or could it be us?