nothin Cathy Osten: Compromise Works | New Haven Independent

Cathy Osten: Compromise Works

State Senate Deputy President Pro Tempore and Sprague First Selectman Cathy Osten has a unique viewpoint, working simultaneously in both state and municipal politics. Whether zooming in to issues like local farms, or zooming out to how federal spending affects special education, she has an eye on the issues.

On this week’s episode of CCM’s The Municipal Voice the state senator came on to talk about those issues and more, including getting the necessary infrastructure funding to towns and the need to compromise on issues.

Asked about the Town Aid Road (TAR) grants, Sen. Osten said it was beyond reprehensible” to hold these funds from towns and cities. The grants typically pay for road repairs and winter preparation, but delaying them from July when they should be given out has forced municipalities to hold out on these purchases or dip into their own rainy day funds.

One issue she highlighted that doesn’t necessarily draw enough attention is that because of this delay, there’s been a loss of jobs in Connecticut simply from those towns and cities that didn’t hire out for road repair. While she didn’t provide a specific figure, she said that TAR grants are much bigger than the potholes, it is jobs.”

Inadequate financial support to municipalities is a big concern. The state has not funded the Payments-In-Lieu-Of-Taxes (PILOT) program by nearly half of a billion dollars. The federal government has stalled when it comes to funding special education costs which puts pressure on local property tax payers.

Fixing those deficits would go a long way towards curing the ills of towns and cities alike without having to create competition between municipalities by offering them new ways to raise funds. Enforcing the state and federal governments to hold up their end of the deal is another problem entirely.

In the Senate and as a first selectman, she was acutely aware of both state and local issues when it came to the compromise PTSD bill. While previous legislation that she had worked on decreased worker’s compensation by 50 percent, there was still some pushback for the PTSD bill, which falls under state worker’s compensation law.

But the passage this year of the bill showed that it’s beneficial for proponents and opponents to work together,” as Sen. Osten said, adding that she thought it was good that people sat down and crafted a workable solution.”

On other issues, there’s still a need to get everybody together to have that discussion, including on educational regionalization. Despite the backlash that the topic saw in the past year, Sen. Osten asked, Why are we not looking at ways to save money that have no impact to students?”

For her the problem was that of framing, where many people thought that schools would be closing and kids would be going to schools outside of their communities, instead of a back office issue citing things that her town of Sprague was doing through the Northeast Connecticut Council of Governments to save money.

At the center of every collaboration, there are what Sen. Osten called a good cross section of different experiences.” She is one of those people who has that invaluable experience and brings a local mindset to state matters.

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