Consortium's Mission Detailed
to
Officials From Area Towns
Voicesnews.com
By: Leda Quirke
June 29, 2005
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
JOURNAL INQUIRER ARTICLE
New Group to Lobby Against Unfunded Mandates, Other Spending Pressures
By Tom Breen
Journal Inquirer July 7, 2005
After a
budget season which saw voters across Connecticut
reject municipal budgets in referendum votes, a new group is planning to lobby
state politicians to change policies that it says lie at the source of
taxpayers’ discontent. The Connecticut Municipal Consortium for Fiscal
Responsibility, made up of elected town boards from across the state, is
calling for changes to laws concerning binding arbitration, the prevailing
wage, and mandates from the state government.
The
bipartisan group, which began last December and which has earned the
endorsement of 60 towns and 75 municipal boards so far, says towns which
previously saw annual budget growth of between 2 and 3 percent now see budgets
increase by between 4 and 5 percent a year.
"People are rebelling," Michael Guarco,
chairman of the group and also of the Granby
Board of Finance, said Wednesday.
Budget
growth means tax increases, he said, and this year dozens of towns rejected
budgets at least once in referendums, including rejections in Vernon,
East Windsor, Ellington, Somers, and Coventry.
But it isn’t only voters who are frustrated with the situation, he said. Local
officials, who have worked to add programs and services to towns, have had to
reduce or eliminate them in response to defeated referendums. "Municipal
officials are sitting here watching the demise of local government services
because we have to deal with unbridled compensation," Guarco
said.
The goal of
the organization is to have at least 100 towns and 150 municipal boards vote to
endorse its platform, which it says will give a unified voice to its concerns
that will be hard to ignore at the state capitol. The group argues that binding arbitration
laws currently favor public employee unions, meaning annual increases in
salaries and benefits that are hard for towns to match. The group seeks to
"level the playing field" when it comes to negotiating contracts with
unions. Additionally, it wants the
General Assembly not to enact any more mandates on towns until the state
legislature provides full funding for the mandates already on the books. Finally, the group wants changes made to
prevailing wage laws, which require public construction and repair projects to
meet a minimum standard of compensation designed to mirror similar projects in
the private sector.
"That
law shouldn’t be on the books," Guarco said.
"It’s a Depression-era anachronism."
State labor
union officials, though, are wary of such calls for change, saying they can
often camouflage attacks on gains made by workers. Lori Pelletier, secretary treasurer of the
state AFL-CIO, said Wednesday that such objections have been brought up before
the legislature in previous years, but legislators haven’t found much substance
in them. "There are a lot of myths
out there," she said. "In binding arbitration, municipalities win
more often than unions do. If anyone should want to change arbitration laws,
it’s the unions."
Guarco said the group’s goals, if met, would actually help unions,
by allowing towns to hire more employees.
"Because we’re losing programs and services, we’re losing
people," he said. "We’re not so much anti-union, but we think
collective bargaining laws are a big part of the problem."
State Sen.
Edith G. Prague, D-Columbia, co-chairwoman of the state legislature’s Labor and
Public Employees Committee, said today that binding arbitration had been
studied by the legislature in 2004. A
report by the Office of Legislative Research found that arbitrators
side with municipalities in roughly half the cases, and with unions in the
other half, Prague
said.
"The
process we currently have is fair," she said. However, she added that she would be glad to
meet with the members of the new group and hear their concerns.
Connecticut Municipal
Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility
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