Murphy: Child Tax Credit Great; Property Tax ​“Nutso”

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy knows that his constituents worry about being able to make ends meet. It’s his job to connect that worry to congressional solutions.

He sees the American Rescue Plan’s child tax credit as a solution. Property taxes, though, remain a barrier to affordability.

“I think property taxes are a nutso way to fund government,” Murphy said. ​“It is a regressive tax, by and large, that has very little to do with your ability to pay. It provides a disincentive to the improvement of property, and ultimately, it’s a disincentive for municipalities to build affordable housing.”

Murphy spoke about federal and state solutions to his constituents’ concerns on WNHH FM’s ​“The Municipal Voice”, hosted by the Conference of Municipalities and WNHH.

Murphy keeps the concerns of Connecticut residents at the forefront of his mind with town halls, office hours and more.

“One of the risks in this job is that you start thinking the things that we talk about on cable news shows actually matter to regular people,” Murphy said. ​“What matters to people in your state are the same things from year to year: How good are the schools? Are the streets safe? How much taxes am I paying? Can I get a better job?”

Affordability always tops that list.

Murphy expects the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to change that with the child tax credit expansion that Rep. Rosa DeLauro fought for her entire career. By delivering up to $3,600 per child annually to low-income families, the credit is expected to bring half of the children currently in poverty above the poverty line.

This will create a virtuous cycle of anti-poverty effects.

“As these families get more money and they put more money in the local economy, those businesses then have increased demand. This allows them to hire more, which then takes these families who were relying on the child tax credit in order to pay their bills and puts them in a position of being self-sufficient,” Murphy said.

Property taxes counteract those positive effects by discouraging affordable housing and weighing heavily on low-income families. Murphy’s solution is regionalism.

Eliminating certain taxes like the vehicle tax and spreading out the tax burden regionally would help alleviate these problems. At the same time, it would help Connecticut look more attractive to the federal government as it disperses aid or grant dollars.

Regional governments elsewhere put together more competitive applications for aid, because they help larger populations, Murphy said. For example, the federal government is more likely to approve an application from San Diego County — which has a population nearly equal to Connecticut’s — than from an ad hoc regional government.

The lack of county-level government has affected Connecticut’s receipt of coronavirus relief aid. The initial CARES Act didn’t send any direct funds to municipalities. Instead, it sent funds that would have otherwise gone to counties to the state. CCM, alongside the National League of Cities, worked with senators like Murphy to get that money directly into Connecticut towns and cities.

Now that local governments are receiving that aid, Murphy thinks they should ​“be bold.” Like Gov. Ned Lamont, he believes some aid should go towards summer camps and summer learning experiences. In addition, he would like to see it become seed money to create more vocational training programs and bring in more paraprofessionals.

“We know that kids’ learning loss is not going to be made up just in the 2021 – 22 school years,” Murphy said.

Murphy is looking ahead to the American Jobs Plan that President Joe Biden has proposed to reinvest in infrastructure across the country.

Murphy is afraid that it will not be enough. For example, even $40 million would only be enough to fix issues in the northeastern rail system, not improve travel, he said.

“My biggest worry is that as this package starts to get negotiated down, it’s actually not going to result in a change in consumers’ interaction with infrastructure,” he said.

Because Connecticut train riders don’t care about the minutiae in the American Jobs Plan. They care about how quickly they can get to work.

Murphy knows, because he’s asked them. They may not be tuned in daily to a cable news show, but they are tuned in daily to their children’s education. They care about how their children will catch up after a rough year of remote learning.

“The walk across the state, the telephone town halls, the office hours, those are all designed to make sure that I’m picking up what matters to everybody,” he said. ​“Not just the folks who are sort of watching politics on a daily basis.”