Connecticut Municipal Consortium for
Fiscal Responsibility
The map
showing Connecticut
towns and districts who have officially
endorsed the Consortium has been
updated! If the boards in your town have not yet signed on, we encourage you to
contact the members and let them know about this important group
Congratulations
to the Consortium’s Newest Members…
The
Boards of Finance of Trumbull and Westport
The genesis of the Consortium – a broad alliance of duly elected town boards
from a host of municipalities throughout Connecticut – comes in response to the
growing wave of taxpayer discontent and local budget defeats we have witnessed
over the past couple of years. The rate of rejections remains high while local
property tax rates increase at around 5% per year. At the same time, overall
municipal employment declines and existing program is squeezed out of budgets
in town after town, victims of unbridled compensation and other state
interventions into our local budgetary affairs.
Our
focus is primarily on the cost-management side of the equation. Our
mission is to press for return to the local level of a greater ability to
manage key elements in our own municipal budgets.
The
platform planks are all common threads of the legislative agendas of the three
major municipal advocacy organizations – CCM, COST, and CABE – and call for
leveling the playing field under binding arbitration, raising the cost
thresholds on capital projects under prevailing wage laws, and prohibiting new
mandates placed on towns until state government meets its own existing
funding commitments to the towns under current law. Very simply, our joint
message to the Capitol is to untie our hands so that we are more able to better
and more efficiently manage our own local affairs.
These themes reinforce our view that our cause is pro-local government…
pro-education… and pro-taxpayer. Then our growing group of town boards, and
board chairmen, representing a broad and diverse group of municipalities
throughout Connecticut, seeks to deliver a common message with a unified voice
to legislators and the legislature… a message that truly is
across-the-boards…across-the-parties… and across-the-state.
We encourage the governing
authorities in every town and city - Boards of Selectmen, Education, Finance,
Alderman, and Town Councils - to join us by endorsing the Consortium effort and
by participating in pressing state lawmakers for change.
Has your town joined with
the Consortium yet?
We may be reached through
the following members:
Mike Guarco,
Chairman
Mike Zelasky,
Chairman George
McLaughlin, Chairman
Granby Board of
Finance Lisbon Board of
Finance New Milford Board of Finance
budgetguru06035@aol.com
MikeZelasky@adelphia.net
geomcljr@charter.net
Richard
Burke
John Adams, Chairman
Cal Heminway,
Chairman
Oxford Board of
Finance Granby Board of Selectmen
Granby Board of
Education
Richard.Burke@asml.com
jadams@rizzo.com
calhemin@sbcglobal.net
WHAT YOU CAN DO
TO SUPPORT THE
CONSORTIUM EFFORT
Initial steps:
Secure endorsement from the
Boards in your town
Finance, Education, Selectmen/Town Council
Encourage the BOF
Chair, or his designee, to participate in the development of county-wide
associations that will combine to form a statewide network.
Long-range:
Educate yourself and
others on how and why reducing the slope of the cost curve allows more
flexibility in providing program and reducing tax rate increases.
Meet with your local
legislators on these issues and let them know why change is
important to your town, and townspeople.
Be an advocate for the issues:
Take the message to the Capitol, to your legislative delegation and others.
Testify when
the call goes out on a useful bill relating to our agenda.
Help us to broaden the
Consortium roster by securing support from town boards that agree with our
mission. Their support is very important and that of the Finance Chair is
vital.
If you would like to become
more active, you are most welcome to join us in reaching out to those in other
towns and spreading the message. Please feel free to contact any of those
listed below.
Mike Guarco,
Chairman
Mike Zelasky,
Chairman
George McLaughlin, Chairman
Granby Board of
Finance Lisbon Board of
Finance New Milford Board of Finance
Budgetguru06035@aol.com
MikeZelasky@adelphia.net
geomcljr@charter.net
Richard
Burke
John Adams, Chairman
Cal Heminway,
Chairman
Oxford Board of
Finance Granby Board of
Selectmen Granby Board of Educatiuon
Richard.Burke@asml.com
jadams@rizzo.com
calhemin@sbcglobal.net
****************************
Excerpts from Past Editorials
from two distinquished publications….
Republican-American - Waterbury, Connecticut
EDITORIAL
Taxpayers' friend
In a state
dominated by socialist politicians subservient to public-employee unions, what
Big Labor says goes.
Breaking labor's stranglehold on taxpayers
will not be easy, but it's a fight worth winning, and taxpayers now have
another important ally in that fight: the bipartisan Connecticut Municipal
Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility.
The consortium's goal -- to fix the
fundamental flaws of compulsory arbitration in public-employee-union contracts
-- should be the No. 1 priority of the Connecticut
Conference of Municipalities and its ilk. Unfortunately, those organizations,
like the legislature and much of the executive branch, have been hijacked by
the unions and thus give only lip service to reforms when they are raised every
spring at the Capitol.
Given the odds of success, the fight for
reform must go on 24/7, and those in the trenches must be tireless and
relentless. And that's where the consortium can play its most vital role.
The consortium is led by Michael Guarco, chairman of Granby's
finance board who understands that fiscal responsibility will be impossible in Connecticut as long as
unelected arbiters wield their biased influence over the process and have the
final say on what's reasonable and necessary.
Mr. Guarco and just
about every municipal and state official know arbitration forces governments to
devote ever larger shares of their annual budgets to employee wages and
benefits. They know arbitration robs local governments of their ability to
address local needs and priorities. But the biggest difference is Mr. Guarco is willing to take on the powerful special interests
who enjoy putting the screws to helpless taxpayers.
The consortium's objective: amend labor laws
that protect unions while driving state and local taxes ever higher. He and the
consortium deserve the immediate and wholehearted support of municipal boards
in Greater Waterbury, the Naugatuck
Valley and Litchfield County.
But that backing must be more than just the adoption
of a single, strongly worded resolution.
Members of boards of selectmen, finance and
education, as well as town councilors and aldermen, must be willing to put in
the time to agitate for arbitration reform. They must testify at legislative
hearings, speak to community groups and take every opportunity to raise the
issue of arbitration reform at any public forum.
They must get behind candidates for local and
state offices who share their view that the effects of binding arbitration may
be seen in Connecticut's deteriorated infrastructure, in underfunded
state and local pension funds, in reduced municipal and state services, in
narrowed school curriculums and in the rampant corruption in state government.
Those unwilling to make the commitment should step aside in favor of those who
are willing.
As veterans of the arbitration-reform effort,
we know the consortium is in for a long, hard, frustrating fight.
It cannot expect help from Big Labor's
lackeys in the legislature or from a news media reflexively sympathetic to
union causes. In the face of determined resistance from the entrenched special
interests, the consortium and its allies must not waver.
Only when taxpayers or people accountable
directly to them have the final say on union contracts will governments be able
to control their fiscal destiny and taxpayers secure genuine tax relief.
****************************
Voicesnews.com
By: Leda Quirke
OXFORD - There's strength in numbers, especially when it
comes to effecting reforms for the economic betterment of the community.
That was the message imparted by Mike Guarco, a spokesman for the Connecticut
Municipal Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility, to representatives of boards of
finance, education and selectmen from the towns of Oxford,
Woodbury Naugatuck, New Milford and Monroe.
Mr. Guarco, who
also is chairman of Granby's Board of Finance, was invited to Oxford Town Hall
last Thursday evening by the local finance board to provide information about the
consortium, which was founded in December and now has representation from 60 of
the state's 169 towns and from 75 municipal boards.
The consortium's mission, Mr. Guarco said, is to encourage local officials and their
advocacy groups to communicate and work together for common objectives, to
educate the Legislature about common problems and to lobby for legislative
changes that permit communities to live within their means without negatively
impacting services and taxes.
Issues the consortium has identified as
needing reform include the lack of local control over expenditures such as
salaries and benefits and the cumulative impact of unfunded mandates.
The consortium was created in response to
growing dissatisfaction among taxpayers which has been evidenced over the last
few years by the budget defeats in a growing number of towns, Mr. Guarco said.
Its agenda, which is similar to those of
three major municipal advocacy groups - the Connecticut Council of
Municipalities, the Council of Small Towns and the Connecticut Association of
Boards of Education - is to level the playing field under binding arbitration,
raise cost thresholds on capital projects under prevailing wage laws and
prohibit new mandates until state government meets its existing funding commitments
to towns under current law.
Mr. Guarco noted
that town budgets, which through the 1990s increased 2 to 3 percent annually,
have, in the last three or four years, reflected increases of 4 to 4.5 percent.
At the same time, unemployment is increasing
and the level of service is declining.
"In many towns we see program after
program falling from the budget with money going to pay for salaries and new
mandates," he said.
Mr. Guarco
said the consortium, whose membership is concentrated now in the Hartford and
Litchfield areas, is seeking to add to its roster representatives from the
boards of selectmen, education and finance from more towns.
"If cost control is important in your
community, this is a way to pursue it," he told attendees.
Asked by local Board of Finance Chairman Tom
Kelly how the consortium would use local support, Mr. Guarco
responded that a grass roots effort was needed to reach legislators.
"The folks at CABE, COST and CCM, which
are part and parcel of this development, need grass roots to weigh in," he
said.
He said a few members probably can't be
effective, but a consortium of 100 towns with 70 or more members can make a
difference.
When the boards of selectmen, finance and
education deliver the same message, the effect is even more dramatic, he
suggested.
Oxford finance board member Dick Burke, who
learned about the consortium in a newspaper article and who persuaded the
finance board to invite Mr. Guarco to a meeting,
suggested that the consortium needed to make communities aware of their
existence and their mission.
"If I hadn't read the article, none of
us would be sitting here tonight," he said.
Mr. Burke suggested that newsletter mailings
might be one way to make get other communities on board.
Asked how communities could join, Mr. Guarco said all that was necessary was to have town boards
adopt a resolution endorsing the consortium's mission statement.
Mr. Burke said after the meeting that he
hoped that the consortium grows.
"This grass roots effort has to become
more structured to keep it together," he said.
Selectman Dave Haversat
and Board of Education Chairman Robert DeBisschop
said they would take the proposal to their respective boards for their
endorsement.
Mr. DeBisscchop
said he believed the consortium had significant merit.
"The bigger we make that group, the
better off the local board will be," he said.
Mr. DeBisschop said
he agreed that the issues of binding arbitration and unfunded
state mandates needed to be addressed. In short, they're "killing
us," he said