Thomas MacMillan Photo
Freshman Newhalllville/Prospect Hill Alder Michael Stratton (pictured) submitted this opinion piece to offer what he calls the under-reported and neglected true story about his budget fight this session.
If you come to my office on Elm Street, you will see what appears at first glance to be a framed piece of abstract art — - a smattering of black, brown, and red pastels. If you were in a rush, you might think, “Another one of those pretentious paintings that sell for kazillions that my 5‑year-old could do.” But if you get a bit closer and give your brain a chance to get used to the painting, you will see that all of these lines tell a story. The subject is a bloodied rhinoceros who has been badly mauled by a large group of attackers. But the rhino is not conceding, he is charging back into the fray. You question the sanity of the rhino, but cannot help but admire the passion and courage.
Someone looking at my first few months as an alder might have the same impression. I can almost hear the collective voice of the city say, “Interesting fellow that Stratton. I like the zealousness, but I can’t really understand whether all this charging around has a point.”
I write this op-ed piece to clarify my positions so you know what they are, and to convince you that the issues we confront today are worth every ounce of our attention and energy, and I ask you to join me and our band of freethinkers known as the Peoples Caucus.
Undemocratic Politics
But first, why is it that residents don’t get the full scoop? The problem of not quite understanding the impact of the issues I have identified comes not from a failure on my part or yours. It is the result of a very sick and undemocratic politics that drowns out dissident voices. For example, my questioning of mayoral staff on multi-million dollar budget items is regularly cut off at finance workshops; my requests for documentation of budget line items universally rejected; my proposals to get independent verification of appropriate salary levels and staffing levels is always denied; even answering a constituent’s direct and simple question to me at public budget hearings was censured for violation of some unwritten rule; handing out of copies of budgets from other peer cities to contrast with our opaque one met with Finance Committee Chair Andrea Jackson-Brooks requiring all future handouts be approved in advance; the superintendent of schools was permitted by the President of the Board of Alders to avoid answering a list of questions about Board of Education spending that he requested I submit in lieu of oral questioning; alerting the mayor in a most dignified way to potentially illegal payments to the Board of Education was met with three letters from her and her staff insulting my intelligence and claiming that I had not done my homework; and any objection by me however civilized to being treated unfairly is shouted down by the chair in a chorus of the suburban Yale union’s trained alders.
The net result is that I am never able to get a full point across or completely corroborate my preliminary findings. It has also led to distractions like when I lost my cool 5.5 hours into a brutal finance meeting where I had been repeatedly silenced. Not wanting to be egged into confrontation, I did not complain. But near the end, at 11:45 p.m., Alder Jeanette Morrison claimed that I was being disrespectful in suggesting we verify salary data before paying someone $116,000. I responded that any city that can’t afford to pay for summer camps for kids ought to look hard at any and all expenses, and they, not I, ought to ashamed. That set off an ugly shouting match that cost me credibility and distracted from my message. Like most people I have my limits, but when I am raising such critical issues it is incumbent upon me to have a gravitas matching the significance. I failed that day but I also learned.
Misleading Press Coverage
The other issue is press coverage. The press in this town is not an objective reporter of the news, it is too often a player in the politics. The New Haven Independent for instance seems intent on using its forum to pick the winners and losers. I was very frustrated when the NHI did nothing to corroborate my findings on education or PILOT. Instead they left facts hanging in the air with, I believe, the intention of weakening my point.
The press also regularly fails to report the whole story. At the final budget meeting of the Finance Committee, I proposed amendments for reductions in education spending so that the money could be used for universal community policing, a WPA jobs program to get parents of school age children working, a full recreation and arts program for kids city wide, and a wide range of summer and year round jobs for kids. The press report from NHI: “Stratton moved to dramatically cut education funding.” Not one mention of the other half of my proposal, and that the intent of education cuts was to do more for New Haven not less. The Register did the same thing when I questioned where the homeless grants were going. I asked this to make sure that the homeless were the ones primarily benefitting. The report: “Stratton advocated cutting benefits for the homeless”.
Three weeks before that homeless cut falsehood the New Haven Register reprinted a letter from Reverend Newman of the Greater New Haven African American Ministers Association that said I called members of the board “welfare mothers.” This was after the Register was notified by Newman that he had his facts wrong and was retracting the letter.
The lesson: the Democratic machine is powerful, and they are running scared. They want me out of politics quick. I love the comments I get from leadership: “You’re too big for being an alder. This isn’t for you. Go back, make money. Run for the Senate …” No, I say, I am not too big for the place where I was born. I don’t care about Hartford or D.C. I care about New Haven.
So here are the real issues, none of which are being addressed, and which would totally transform New Haven overnight if only the leadership could remove politics from the equation:
Issue #1: Education Funding
Education is a state function and our New Haven Board of Education works for the state not for the city. The state sets all the mandates, and also the minimum amount that must be given by each town. The state and federal government give a combined $275 million to the BOE for all special education, regular education, transportation and food. Our total revenue available for city spending is $350 million. In this year’s budget, the Board of Education is shown as receiving a total contribution from the city of $24 million. There is no other line item to education.
What I uncovered was that buried in the non-education budget were at least another $112 million in payments to the BOE. We were paying $112 million per year more than we had to and nobody knew. The relevance of this finding was enormous: $112 million represents 35 percent of all our revenue and it was being shifted to education without anyone outside of leadership knowing.
Why was this happening?
My conjecture is that education is the best place to put money if you want less accountability. There is no one watching the store. With the alders thinking we gave only the minimum, there would be no reason to see how it was used. And in fact, there appear to be tens of millions of dollars in consulting contracts and political deals hidden away in the BOE budget.
How can you prove the waste?
I can prove that at least $50 million is being wasted and that if eliminated no classroom impact would occur. But I have been denied all access to proof of the BOE line-item budget. We are literally slated to approve a budget that has no substantiation. The BOE, the mayor and the alder leadership will not give me or anyone else access.
But don’t we want to give more $$$ to the kids?
What I discovered was that almost every town and city in Connecticut gives only the exact amount required by the state. The reason they do this is because once the money is given to the BOE the city loses control over the money. The BOE has no accountability to the city and we cannot dictate education policy. Giving more than the minimum is like giving a gift. It is money we lose control over. Prudent people and governments do not give money over what they must when the purpose for its payment cannot be enforced.
What should we do?
We need to retake control of our city money. Education is more than what happens in the schools. When we lose 35 percent of our budget to an unaccountable BOE, we impoverish city services. Safe neighborhoods are necessary before kids can learn. If we take our money back we can afford universal community policing and blight reduction. Jobs are critical for parents of school-age kids. Unemployed parents lead to educational issues for the children. Sports, music and art are programs that inspire educational success. If we take our money back we can do this. We can also build real vocational schools and early childhood centers run by the city, where we have accountability. We can also cut taxes to stabilize neighborhoods, and bring in businesses. $115 million dollars changes our city overnight. Throwing it at an educational system that is out of our control, and which is overfunded when compared to any other of the 169 town is bad for everyone.
Why can’t we do this?
Whenever the topic comes up leadership talks about how Stratton wants to hurt the kids. That could not be further from the truth. I see education holistically. The city’s leaders see it as a place of enormous patronage. Opening up education to a serious investigation threatens those who make their living off of it. 115 people make more than $200,000 a year cloistered away at 54 Meadow St.
Issue #2: PILOT Funding
Our New Haven delegation has bargained away our legal rights to PILOT. In 2001 New Haven received the full statutory PILOT. This is when then-Sen. Toni Harp became Appropriations Committee co-chair. What Senators Harp and Looney then did was agree to have PILOT cut for all towns if they were given discretionary funds for their favorite charities and causes. From 2001 – 2013 (while Sen. Harp and state Rep. Toni Walker were appropriations chairs) our PILOT funds were cut 70 percent while their discretionary funds increased every year. Suburban legislators loved it. They were able to reduce PILOT by hundreds of millions while giving a tiny portion of that back to Harp, Looney and Walker.
When I testified for PILOT this year, Mayor Harp was actively working against the bill. In fact state Rep. Walker took Alder Anna Festa and me aside and said, “Why are you supporting PILOT, don’t you know this will cost me mental health funds?!” These legislators are now costing the city $50 million a year through deal-making that builds up their political power and makes the city poor. This is a 22 percent tax reduction every year that they bargained away.
To add insult to injury, Sen. Looney proposed a bill that dramatically cut our statutory share from 77 percent to 50 percent, but which made the payment mandatory. Not a good bill but better than the 32 percent we were receiving. Nonetheless, under pressure from Governor “Gimmick” Malloy, Looney killed even that bill on the final day of the session — even though the votes were there to pass it.
Issue #3: No Transparency & Undemocratic Behavior
The budget is not in conformity with the charter. All allocations are supposed to go to a department so there is accountability and we know what each department actually costs. Instead, the administration has created aggregate funds like “pension”, “health benefits”, and “debt service” that allow monies to be lumped together so that no one knows for whom the money is being spent. This violates the charter and allows for illegal activity.
The most incredible illegal payments are to teachers and administrators. Over $30 million is paid out of our fund marked non-education “employee benefits.” When I asked the budget director why we were making these payments, he told me it was required by the Municipal Employee Relations Act. I responded to him by pointing out the second sentence of this law reads “teachers and administrators are not covered by this law and are employees of the BOE.” Conceding that point, he then said the union contract was approved by the alders and required the city to pay. I pointed out in response that the union contract with teachers and administrators clearly states that the BOE would be fully responsible for the health benefits. So, I said what’s the reason the city is paying $30 million or almost 18 percent of its revenue? His response: “Faith … good faith.”
Mayor Harp was made aware of these illegal payments and chose to continue making them. Under our charter, she can be held personally liable for those payments. Incredibly she wants them to continue into fiscal year 2014 – 2015. A simple injunctive action should end this practice. My hope is that her honor will come to her senses by next Tuesday’s budget vote. This represents a massive amount of revenue for the city that could do so much good.
Issue #4: No Vision Or Plan For Jobs
My proposed ordinance would require all city-funded construction projects to get 50 percent of their labor from the city residents. This is a constitutionally acceptable ordinance and would create almost full employment of residents in three to five years. Boston instituted such a law 30 years ago. Why this wasn’t put into place when we built $1.5 billion worth of new schools? The response? Leadership doesn’t like the law. Why would they oppose such a good bill? It takes away their ability to trade favors with powerful suburban contractors.
No plan for youth jobs: This is the single most important issue and justifies raising taxes to accomplish. We are in the middle of an unprecedented spike in youth violence. We need to make sure we have a full offering of camps and jobs for teens. We also need to get as many police on the street as possible. The mayor and board have offered no new money for any of these very pressing needs. Instead the mayor cut youth librarians and underfunded youth jobs (1,200 applied but only 400 can get a five-week job). The mayor, in a mind-numbingly bizarre response, offered gift cards to the families of disengaged youth.
My amendments to the budget pay for immediate universal community policing and jobs for every child as well as camps. It would also expand the library staffing and hours, as well as expand the street outreach workers. These items could easily be paid for with education reductions or if there is no will for that, a small tax increase. But to date there is no plan on how to respond. We badly need a bridge to get us through this summer to a place where we can look at this issue more deliberately.Issue #5: No Allegiance To The City
The mayor has four senior advisors. They all live outside New Haven. 79 percent of the 118 employees making over $150,000 (including salary and benefits) at the BOE live outside New haven. 81 percent of police and 67 percent of fire employees live outside New Haven.
It was Sen. Looney who passed the bill making it illegal for us to require employees to live in New Haven. There is nothing more destructive to New Haven then losing more than 800 middle class workers to the suburbs and there is nothing more frightening then having a chief of staff, a deputy chief of staff, a budget director, a communications chief, and a public works director all living outside New haven. How can we trust policymakers to properly care and advocate for New Haven when they don’t even want to live here?
These are the issues that matter; the issues that will make us a great city.
Pretty damning for Walker, Harp and Looney.