New Haven’s seventh official Democratic candidate for mayor started his campaign with a call for New Haven to consider taxing suburbanites who travel to town for government jobs.
The candidate, Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina, made the call during a visit to the city clerk’s office at 200 Orange St. to file his official papers to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination at a Sept. 10 primary to succeed retiring two-decade incumbent Mayor John DeStefano.
Paul Bass Photo
Carolina and campaign treasurer Teretha Brooks (left) & Democracy Fund administrator Ken Krayeske.
Carolina also made a point of simultaneously filing papers to participate in the city’s Democracy Fund public-financing system, under which candidates swear off outside special-interest committee contributions and individual donations above $370 (as opposed to the legal limit of $1,000) in return for matching government dollars. Three fellow mayoral candidates have also committed to the system: Justin Elicker, Gary Holder-Winfield, and Sundiata Keitazulu. Three mayoral candidates have chosen not to participate: Toni Harp, Henry Fernandez, and Matthew Nemerson.
Carolina’s campaign begins with a cast of supporters from Westville: his campaign manager, Darryl Brackeen, a Hillhouse and Fairield University political science graduate and current schoolteacher; his campaign spokesmen, attorney Bob Pellegrino and teacher Jack Paulishen; and his expected city clerk candidate running mate, Anne Weaver Lozon. An “exploratory committee” campaign event on April 9 also revealed a sizable initial base of support among people active in New Haven’s black community.
Carolina hugs Deputy City Clerk Sally Brown upon submitting his official papers Tuesday to run for mayor.
At Tuesday’s filing, Carolina sought to differentiate himself from the crowded field by stressing his local roots — growing up in the Elm Haven projects, attending high school and college here, now owning a home in town and running a public high school — as making him especially qualified to tackle what he called the city’s central challenge: poverty.
“I have skin in this game. And I’ve had it here for a long time,” said Carolina, who is 45.
New Haven needs “bold and audacious leadership” willing to explore dramatic new ideas, Carolina argued.
He spoke of two ideas that he said would involve adults more in the around-the-clock life of people in the neighborhoods.
One idea: Giving blighted homes foreclosed upon by the city to city cops. The cops would agree to live in the homes and receive a five-year tax abatement.
“If crime is an issue in our most violent neighborhoods, and if blight is an issue, what better way to deal with the issue of blight than to give homes that have been foreclosed that are on the list of the city to New Haven police officers?” Carolina said.
In the 2011 mayoral campaign, candidate Jeffrey Kerekes proposed a “Come Back Home” program offering government workers 50 percent tax breaks to buy houses in town. (Click on the play arrow to watch him discuss it at the time.) In 2010, then-Alderman Darnell Goldson proposed a “HomeWork Program” under which city employees living outside New Haven would enjoy a year without paying car taxes if they move into the city, and get hit with a “community contribution” tax if they don’t. (The proposal did not pass.)
Carolina floated a larger idea, as well: Instituting a commuter tax on suburbanites who hold city government jobs.
At this point, Carolina said, he is suggesting the general idea; he doesn’t yet have specifics of the plan.
The idea has arisen from time to time for decades in New Haven and in cities across the country as they desperately seek new tax revenue. Business interests generally oppose commuter taxes, claiming they will drive away employers. Carolina said he’s not suggested placing the tax on private employers. Instead, he characterized the tax as a tool to make teachers and cops more a part of the city not just during the workday, but on off-hours as well.
Public employees, he said, “have to have skin in this game also. It’s not enough to work in this city and go back home.”
He noted that public education and police and fire services consume 52 percent of the city budget — and “70 percent of those people [working in those departments] live outside the city of New Haven. Those children, when they leave every day and they’re in the community beyond the school day, they don’t see these people enough. Certainly there’s exceptions. Don’t get me wrong. But the bottom line is the resources that these people can provide to this city, those resources go” to other communities.
Also, in the quest to eradicate poverty, “we have to be very bold to find additional revenue sources in this city,” Carolina said.
The city can’t institute a commuter tax on its own. It would need state permission to do so, permission from a legislature dominated by the suburbs.
New Haven state Sen. Martin Looney cast doubt on the prospects of passing such a tax. Restricting it to government employees would probably lead to an equal protection challenge by the suburban city workers, who would call the tax a deduction from their paychecks, Looney predicted. And a broader commuter tax can succeed only in larger metropolitan areas with bigger cities, he argued.
“When I talk about bold and audacious leadership, I’m also talking about that,” Carolina (pictured) said when asked about the possibility of getting state approval. “We need to bring stakeholders together in this community and have a serious discussion around the potential of a commuter tax. We need to seriously look at it.”
One of Carolina’s Democratic mayoral campaign opponents, Matthew Nemerson, called Carolina’s suggestion “creative” and “exactly the kind of conversation-starter that we need.”
As president of the regional Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s, Nemerson opposed city officials’ efforts to get the state legislature to pass enabling legislation for New Haven to pass a commuter tax. That proposal, unlike Carolina’s, would have affected all workers in town, not just government workers.
Efforts to get the state to support residency requirements for government workers have also fallen short in Hartford. Some aldermen in recent years — such as Darnell Goldson, Charles Blango and Sergio Rodriguez — have explored ways to increase the number of government workers living in town, perhaps through greater preferences in hiring. Right now only top mayoral appointees are required to live in New Haven (or pretend to live here by having a local address).
“There have been conversations for decades about whether municipal employees should be required to live in the city, more than just a few of the leaders, the top managers. The state has never gone along with that. [But] it’s a conversation to have,” Nemerson said. He said the larger issue is how to get revenue from the region. “We’re basically bleeding the city dry by not allowing it to benefit from the amazing region. Greater New Haven is one of the richest and most diverse and healthy regions in the country with one exception — it is bleeding its heart to death. And so a body cannot live forever if all its extremities can’t have blood pumped to them. We’re about to take to hit a tipping point where the entire region has to take its responsibility seriously and the financial role it needs to play to keep New Haven growing and strong.
“The real question here is: What permission is the state going to give the city to find new revenue sources? I don’t think an income tax or commuter tax is the only answer. Bot I think we need to put together a menu of ways that cities can be enabled to raise new revenues. The most sensible thing is to have a regional property tax.”
Sen. Looney said he’d like to see a regional tax approach too, similar to one used in Minnesota.
Mayoral candidate Justin Elicker called the commuter tax “an idea worth exploring. But I think it’s important to us to focus on the things we control.” Candidate Gary Holder-Winfield, a state representative, said he’d be “interested in seeing Kermit’s overall plan before I comment.” He said the “larger question” is what kind of plan New Haven draws up for “expanding general taxable lane” and finding more revenue.
Historically, municipal union leaders have opposed efforts to favor city-dwellers or tax suburbanites in local government jobs. Police union President Lou Cavaliere Jr. said Tuesday that he would oppose a commuter tax on city workers along the lines proposed by Carolina.
“Wow. I never heard of such a thing,” Cavaliere said. “On top of the points you receive for taking a test for one of the positions for the city of New Haven, they want to charge you for living out of the city? I don’t think you should be penalized for where you live. I just don’t think it’s fair to the kid coming out of college that might not even own a home yet and just wants to be a policeman and work in the public sector, and penalized before he starts his job. He’s already in the hole.”
“You’re making people turn away from the city if they don’t live in the city,” Cavaliere argued. “They think if you live here, you’re going to take more responsibility for the town you live in. A policeman is very professional. When it comes to that, they put their blinders on and are very professional. Your drive is always to do good.”
These are critical issues to the New Haven community. It's great to see a candidate bringing them to the forefront, instead of speaking in vague generalities about "adding jobs," "fixing schools," or "building consensus." I hope this happens at the debates.
To make the commuter tax easy, could we just charge non-resident city employees for parking? Parking permit zones could be expanded around city schools, so that out-of-town employees who work there would pay the tax, too.
$700/year in commuter/parking fees times the 3,000 or so employees who live out of town and drive here works out to over $2 million in revenue that can be reinvested into our crumbling neighborhoods and hire back all those parks workers we laid off. But more importantly, a step like this encourages those employees to move to the city.
We need a Mayor who can bring these issues up with the Unions and "New Haven Rising" (CCNE). As long as those who represent our suburban workforce (Cavaliere's union for example is 80% out-of-town) continue to call all of the shots, the city is doomed. The first step is bringing in a Mayor who forces groups like Cavaliere's to have that conversation.