From The Federation of Connecticut
Taxpayer Organizations, Inc.
Contact: Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
Please Call your State Representatives and Tell Them: No More Taxes, No More Bonded Debt,
Cut Spending
House
Democrats - 800-842-8267
Senate Democrats - 800-842-1420
House
Republicans - 800-842-1423
Senate Republicans - 800-842-1421
TAX TALK DECEMBER 15, 2009
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No Guts, No Glory, But Definitely More Taxes!
From the Federation:
This was their time to shine! An opportunity for 14 municipal leaders, at
the invitation of Governor Rell, to propose solutions
to the state budget crisis, by offering alternatives to cutting municipal
aid.
Instead
of solutions, some gave excuses, with others suggesting more taxes. New Haven Mayor DeStefano
was reported by CtNewsJunkie to have said …. We don’t have an idea problem.
We have a political problem. DeStefano suggested the group not waste its time on things
like amending the state’s binding arbitration laws, because something like that
won’t pass the Democrat-controlled General Assembly. Instead, DeStefano said the state should be helping municipalities
by allowing them to raise their own revenue through local option taxes.
According
to the Journal Inquirer of Manchester, East Hartford Mayor Melody Currey
declared “I’m not going to put my head
out and say, ‘Chop it off.’” She
also suggested that the state could help
towns by making the real estate conveyance tax permanent.
Both Currey and DeStefano are influential democrats. Currey had served
for 13 years as a state rep. She had
also held the posts of
deputy speaker and deputy majority leader of the House of
Representatives. She was also a member
of the Appropriations and Education Committees.
More
importantly, she also serves as the Vice President of Connecticut Conference of Municipalities
(CCM), a lobbying group for the majority of the 169 towns within the
state. DeStefano
has served as Mayor of New Haven
since 1993 and is also a past president of CCM.
If we have a political problem, as DeStefano
alleges, then DeStefano and Currey
are part of the problem. Together, these
two powerful democrats could have provided a solution by bringing the Democrat
controlled state legislature together with the membership of CCM and demanded
reforms to state Binding Arbitration laws which would give them, the Governor,
and the municipal leaders throughout the State the ability to manage their
personnel and budgets and in turn control taxes. They could have supported Governor Rell’s initial calls for reform which included “Suspend binding arbitration requirements for two years while we confront
our economic troubles . Limit mandatory subjects of
binding arbitration to salaries and
benefits only.”
They would have recognized that the economy is having a
deleterious impact on governments throughout the world - Connecticut currently
has one of the highest bonded debts in the country and cannot sustain more debt
as Moody’s recently downgraded the outlook for Connecticut’s bonds from stable
to negative - Tax collection rates at the
State and in the towns will not be realized as unemployment continues to
climb.
They fail to realize that
without reforms to binding arbitration laws their towns could follow Vallejo, California
which was driven by union contracts to bankruptcy. Other factors these municipal leaders are failing
to consider is that some union contracts currently include No Layoff clauses
and/or wage increases.
In conclusion, businesses and
property owners in Connecticut
should not be expected to pay wage increases to public employees while those in
the private sector are being forced to take their place in the unemployment
line.
But some elected public
officials fear the unions more than they do the taxpayers.
Therefore, with the majority of
towns dedicating 85% or more of their local budgets to town and Board of Ed
salaries, pensions and healthcare costs, taxpayers in the 169 towns throughout
the State should brace themselves for the next tsunami of property tax
increases.
In the next edition of Tax Talk,
FCTO will provide you with statistics and information on state revenue and
spending.
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Without
political will, Connecticut
will sink By Chris Powell, Journal Inquirer, December 12, 2009
From the state Capitol this week the message
rang out loud and clear: Nowhere in state or municipal government can any more
money be saved even as the state budget deficit grows by tens of millions of
dollars each month and threatens state government with running out of cash next
year just as California state government did this year.
First the General Assembly's Appropriations Committee held hearings to parade
every hard-luck case in the state in front of the television cameras to plead
against any reduction in their assistance. Then the Municipal Mandate Board
just appointed by Governor Rell to recommend
reductions in state grants to cities and towns voted not to recommend anything.
The only municipal official opposing the motion was Vernon Mayor Jason McCoy,
who had specified many state mandates whose repeal would reduce municipal
expenses.
Just hours previously -- and not noted by
Connecticut's news media or those in elective office -- the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Labor Department had
disclosed that state and local government employee compensation averages 45 percent
more than private industry employee compensation. While the BLS did not report data by state, given Connecticut's nearly complete unionization
of government workers, their advantage over the people who pay for them may be
much greater, especially as private-sector
unemployment has risen. As the taxpaying public's income has collapsed, causing
the collapse in state government's income, all levels of government in Connecticut are still
increasing employee compensation.
A complete disconnect between the government and the people who pay for it has
been achieved.
Indeed, it appears that when, next week, at
Governor Rell's call, the General Assembly convenes
in special session to address the deficit, the leaders of the Democratic
majority may either undertake to try to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars
for current expenses, thereby destroying the state's bond rating if lenders can
even be found, or simply abdicate and adjourn the special session immediately
as if nothing can be done except to await financial collapse.
Has anyone in the parade before the Appropriations Committee ever complained to
his state legislators about the raises and benefit increases paid to state and
local government employees over the last decade as the public's real income has
declined?
Has anyone in the parade ever complained to his legislators about the vast
unfunded liabilities of the state employee pension system?
Has anyone in the parade ever urged his legislators to review how much more
drug criminalization or government-subsidized childbearing outside marriage Connecticut can afford?
Has anyone in the parade ever complained to his congressmen about the
essentially infinite cost of the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan
and the rescues of the bankrupt financial houses that devastated the world
economy?
Of course it is not really as if nothing can be done. The question is just
whether the political will can be mustered to prevent society from collapsing
under the weight of the government. There is a desperate emergency and there
can be no more asking the permission of anyone to save the state. All statutory
and regulatory impediments to saving money must be repealed or suspended so
that the basic functions and humane institutions of government can continue to
do what is essential through hard times.
Early this year Governor Rell briefly acknowledged
the necessity of suspending binding arbitration of public employee union
contracts, though she did nothing to achieve it. The other day the Republican
minority in the legislature proposed that state agency budgets should be cut
across the board. While this was something, it was thoughtless and ignored the
statutory and regulatory changes necessary to saving serious money without
doing unnecessary harm.
What state government needs to do is to become a price maker, not a
price taker, to do what is being done throughout the private economy,
to recognize that this is now a buyer's market, not a seller's market, to start
dictating cost cuts to everyone receiving government funds while insisting
that they provide the same level of service or be replaced.
The great objective must be to restore a relationship between the public's
income and the income of the government, its employees, its vendors, and its
dependents, to wrest control of the government from those who vote for a living
and give it back to those who work for one.
A complete disconnect
between the government and the people who pay for it has been achieved.
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Governor M. Jodi Rell today said she is
bitterly disappointed that majority Democrats in the Legislature have again
failed to take any action to reduce the nearly half a billion dollar deficit in
the current state budget.
“There is no recognition of the very real problems the state
is facing,” Governor Rell said. “Half-truths and
half-measures are not the leadership we need. This lack of action only delays
the inevitable day of reckoning. Continued at …. http://www.ct.gov/governorrell/cwp/view.asp?A=3675&Q=452280
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Joblessness is Here to Stay
Short-term prospects may be brightening, but high
unemployment will be a fixture for the foreseeable future. You know things are
bad when the nation loses 11,000 jobs in November and Americans are overjoyed.
Sure, unemployment has come down a meager 0.2 percent to put us at 10 percent,
but that's still the worst level in decades. And more important, there's no
real end in sight. Even if jobs start to come back sooner than expected—which
may happen as more stimulus money starts to kick in—U.S. unemployment is likely to
remain high for years to come, as much as 7 or 8 percent even into 2014.
"The average American will not be better off in five years—unemployment
will remain high and wage growth will continue to be flat," says George Soros, who forecast an "age of wealth
destruction" four months before the crisis hit. Continued at …. http://www.newsweek.com/id/226426
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From FCTO Board Member, Bob
Green….. This is unreal to watch. It comes from
American Observer, the journalism news at American University.
It is a quick little graphic that shows The progression of unemployment
change from 2007 through 2009. To me it
looks like someone is turning the lights out across America.
The Decline: The Geography of a Recession by LaToya Egwuekwe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrP9qJmjIsA
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