Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

New Mexico gets $2 for every dollar in taxes, New Jersey only 55 cents,� Media Contact: William Ahern (202) 464-5101, WASHINGTON, D.C.�Federal tax and spending splits the nation between �donor states� and �beneficiary states,� according to the Tax Foundation�s annual analysis of federal taxing and spending patterns. continued at the following websites:�� http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1395.html� and http://www.courant.com/media/acrobat/2006-03/22462399.pdf

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE BRANFORD REPRESENTATIVE

TOWN MEETING ON PASSING A RESOLUTION

ON BINDING ARBITRATION REFORM!

Frank Twohill, Branford, franktwohill@hotmail.com

Branford R.T.M. Passes Binding Arbitration Resolution, 26-1

March 20, 2006

Susan, I enjoy your reliable and consistent emails that provide vital information
available nowhere else.� It was nice to see you again and I enjoyed the meeting in West Hartford last month.� We on the Branford Representative Town Meeting passed on March 8 a Resolution, 26-1, urging reform to one part of the binding arbitration process. Frank

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I had the opportunity to meet Ken Mosher when testifying on Binding Arbitration.� I invite you to read Ken�s excellent comments which he is sharing with us below.� Susan

Ken Mosher,� ken@spatulacity.com

Board of Education Member, Region 8, RHAM, Andover, Hebron, Marlborough

BINDING ARBITRATION:� Testimony before Program Review and Investigations Committee� by Ken Mosher

March 1, 2006

�

My name is Ken Mosher and I am an elected member of the Board of Education for Region 8 (RHAM). Region 8 is comprised of Andover, Hebron and Marlborough. Thank you for allowing me to address you on the matter of HB 5490.� As you know, the vast majority of every town's budget goes to the public schools. Furthermore, at least 70% of every school budget is for employee salaries and benefits. This is why I sought election to the Board of Education. If I am able to have any influence at all to lower taxes, it is to be done by addressing that budget area that consumes the most money.� RHAM, like several districts, has had many extremely contentious budget referendums in recent years. In fiscal year 2002 we required 10 referendums to pass the budget, and in fiscal year 2003 we required 12 referendums. I must emphasize the budget difficulties because it brings the harsh light of truth to the extreme dissatisfaction with overspending and over taxation that the taxpayers of the three towns are expressing.� The RHAM board of education has recently completed the process of negotiating the next contact with our teachers' union. With the recent taxpayer unrest, it was the negotiating team�s intent to keep any increase in salaries and benefits as close to zero as possible. However, this was largely an exercise in futility, and Binding Arbitration is fully to blame!� In the world of honest negotiations, management is free to make an offer and labor is free to accept or refuse. If an agreement cannot be reached workers can find employment elsewhere, or in the case of a union they can choose to strike.� While a strike would certainly be disruptive to the school schedule, I believe the right to strike is now a REQUIREMENT if any school board is to make serious progress toward reducing spending.� I will explain my belief. In the world of Binding Arbitration, if the school board and the teachers' union cannot reach an agreement, the arbitrator will take the proposals from each party and choose elements from each. With regard to salary and benefit changes, the arbitrator�s choices will never vary from "the norm." Therefore, no board is able to lead the way in the restraint of spending because a government appointed bureaucrat assumes control if a voluntary agreement cannot be reached.� This arrangement may sound fair, but in reality it takes 100% of the power out of the hands of the taxpayers. If the electorate chooses a board that takes a hard line on spending, they did so out of a conscious desire to control spending and taxation. However, it is a *given* that the arbitrator will make an award that is contrary to the will of the taxpayers because the arbitrator will not choose any proposal which deviates from what he considers the norm.� The right to strike, however, returns the power back to the taxpayer, where it belongs in a Constitutional Republic such as ours. Our republic REQUIRES voter involvement. It is critical to the survival of our society. By removing control over spending, and taxation, from the voters, we enter the world of socialism and tyranny.� HB 5490 is nothing more than feel-good tinkering. In reality it accomplishes nothing. It doesn�t go far enough.� So, in closing, I am saying that Binding Arbitration is wrong, immoral, socialist and tyrannical. It is antithetical to the existence of our republic and it is abusive of the taxpayers of the Connecticut. I would say that I urge you, but in truth I insist, that you abolish Binding Arbitration with regard to all government employees and return the right to strike, and therefore the right of the voting taxpayers to regain their rightful control over their government. For without control of their government they have no true control over their lives. And any man who does not control his own life is nothing but a slave.� Sincerely,� Ken Mosher

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Robert Green, rgreen619@snet.net

Salem Board of Education, FCTO Board Member

Education Funding

March 21, 2006

The following statement was made by me today at the Education funding forum at Ledyard H.S.�� Bob

First of all, please allow me to thank you, the Education Committee, for affording me this opportunity to opine on the issue of education funding. My name is Robert Green.� I am a member of the Salem Board of Education and have been serving in that capacity since November 1996.� While I applaud the efforts of Governor Rell investigation into unfunded mandates and the General Assembly�s study of the Excess Cost Sharing formula, perhaps the greatest negative impact on the funding of Connecticut�s public education system has been our state�s submission to voluntary servitude to the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act.� Due the General Assembly�s reluctance over the years to address the issue of providing adequate funding to our school districts statewide, Connecticut has succumbed to an over-reaching Washington bureaucracy for a pittance of Federal funding that represents only a minute fraction of Connecticut�s total education budget.� An intriguing fact about this funding is that the Federal Government has no constitutional authority to provide any support for education.� The greatest fear of non-compliance with NCLB is the loss of Title I funding.� According to Dr. Betty Sternberg, Connecticut will lose approximately 336 million dollars for its noncompliance.� I ask you, with two casinos providing twenty-five percent of slot revenues and an income tax, wouldn�t you believe that the General Assembly could find 336 million dollars to compensate?� The U.S. Department of Education touts giving Connecticut 750 million dollars to implement current testing under NCLB.� When told that amount falls far short of the 1.3 billion dollars required, Washington�s response is for us to make our tests less challenging; something I prefer to call dumbing down.� Now, we are being told to implement another battery of tests that are unnecessary.� Where do we expect the money come from for this mandate?� Other states have addressed this issue with the State of Utah leading the way; however, Connecticut appears to be content with the status quo, while we at the local and regional levels are left to address its adversities with the limited resources provided to us.� Our State Board of Education will admit that Connecticut had already met or exceeded the mandates of NCLB prior to its enactment, and that the monies needed to implement the imposed mandates would not be fully funded.� Given this admission, the need to sign on to a Federal mandate that inadequately funds and usurps state and local control of our public education systems totally escapes me; unless their being allowed, by federal law, to keep twenty percent of all federal education grant monies for their own administrative purposes as potential factor in that decision.� Connecticut�s long-standing leadership in quality education now stands in jeopardy.� As NCLB�s mandates continue their drain on state and local financial resources, the real victims and the biggest losers will be our children who are being used as pawns in this political chess game.� I ask the General Assembly to sum up the courage to sever the umbilical cord to Washington and retake control of our public systems rather than create another drain on critical tax dollars through a token federal lawsuit.� Doing so, will restore Connecticut�s commitment to fully funding its education systems and its ability to address its own education issues without having to submit itself, its citizens, and its children to voluntary servitude to Washington bureaucrats who are not the experts they purport to be.

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Tom Durso, TDurso8217@aol.com

Vice President,

Watertown Oakville Taxpayers Association

Member, Board of Directors, FCTO

Public School Corruption/Property Tax Cuts?

Letter to the Editor, Waterbury Republican Newspaper

March 26, 2006

"The reality is that corruption has become a natural part of the (public) educational landscape, but it's hidden from view by walls of complacency, denial and self-protection. Exposing corrupt practices is shunned because it would cast a dark and foreboding shadow on how all education dollars are expended and on those who have been entrusted with the public trust to safeguard the school treasure chests." The rantings of some right-wing, anti-kid, anti-union, narrow-minded ideologue? Not quite. Armand A. Fusco, Ed.D has thirty five years of experience in public education including seventeen years as a Connecticut superintendent of schools and these words are found in his stunning new book "School Corruption: Betrayal of Children and the Public Trust" which can be purchased from iUniverse at 1-800-288-4677 or by www.iuniverse.com.�� Recently Professor Fusco spoke at a Yankee Institute-sponsored symposium in Rocky Hill where he warned of� "rampant and pervasive examples of corruption " which he broke down into three levels as applied to the government schools bureaucracy. The first is cheating and deceit, then waste and mismanagement followed by fraud and stealing. Fusco flatly stated that "some degree of corruption is festering in all school districts but it takes critical questioning and diligent work to uncover the type and degree of corruption." He added that one can never find the term "corruption" in any education journals nor in boards of education policy which shows that the "school establishment is in complete denial that corruption exists."�� Dr. Fusco distributed "A Taxpayers Manual: How to Protect School Resources From Fraud and Mismanagement in which he offers "The Ten Critical Questions " designed to determine whether corruption has been committed or could be committed with relative ease. To wit: 1) Asset Management: Is there a comprehensive list of assets and an independent management system in place to document the existence of each asset on a yearly basis. 2) Board Policies: Are there any school board policies dealing with school corruption?�� 3) Credit Cards: Who has credit cards? How are charges independently verified to see if they are proper school expenses"? 4) Federal and State Grants: How are grants being managed in the school district? Who is responsible for monitoring the grants for proper implementation? How is monitoring actually done?� 5)Student activity Funds: How are student activity funds and other cash collections monitored? By whom? Are income and disbursements verified for accuracy and proper usage? Are bank statements reviewed on a monthly basis and by whom? 6) Petty Cash Funds: Who controls each petty cash fund, in what amounts, and how are the funds monitored?7) No Bid Contracts: Which contracts (construction, insurance, consultants etc.) have been awarded without competitive bid? What is the process? Who received such contracts? Which school official oversees the proper completion or implementation of each contract? Was any form of nepotism or favoritism involved? Were board policies followed? 8) Teacher Student Loads: What is the number of students each teacher has during each period of the day, and the total number of students each teacher has during the course of the day? How many aides are there to augment teacher loads and assignments? Fusco: "Staff allocation and assignment is perhaps the one categoryaccounting for most of wasted and mismanaged dollars. In addition, there has been a proliferation of school aidesadded to school resources, yet their numbers are not used to indicate student -teacher ratios and there probably is no documentation supporting their effectiveness."9) Non-Classroom Certified Staff: How is the time and load of such staff (psycholgists, social workers, counselors,speech therapists, etc.) monitored? How is the time of full time staff with reduced teaching loads (department chairpersons, supervising teachers, etc.) monitored? "There is usually no documentation of how such staff uses their time to determine if it is being used constructively and efficiently." 10) Benefits: Do part time employees pay for a proportional share of their insurance benefits? If not why not? Are retirees who are being paid their medical insurance by the school department entitled to the payments? Are there retirees listed who are deceased but still having their benefits paid? How is the list reviewed yearly to keep it updated? Fusco: " A part time employee should be required to pay for a proportional share of his benefits. For example, a 50% employee should pay 50% of the benefits cost." With local budget season in high gear, Professor Fusco's words could not be timelier: "School boards and administrators usually state that 75% to 80% of the budget represents fixed costs. Taxpayers should never accept such a statement because this is the biggest deceit of all. Such a statement assumes that every school employee is essential ,that no consolidations can take place, all programs and services are efficient and effective, all resources are managed with quality guidelines, and every operation is managed with utmost efficiency. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to any operation supported by taxpayer dollars and this is especially true of schools." Professor Fusco offers workshops designed to control and understand wasteful school spending. His email is fusco.@comcast.net. Any municipal finance officer worth his or her weight in pork should run to Dr. Armand A. Fusco before even thinking of tacking on another mill of property tax. Who knows, taxpayers might then be reading profanities in Connecticut newspapers such as "property tax cuts".

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Doug Schwartz, thedougschwartz@gmail.com

New London

Teachers Pensions

March 18, 2006

Sue,� The following letter in the Courant points out what is about the single biggest fraud against CT taxpayers. How this deficit could balloon 50% in two years when pensions accrue at the rate of 2%/year, is beyond my comprehension. Currently, most retiring New London teachers are up around $70,000, so their starting pensions will be $52,500. The author of the letter is a little off in assuming a 30-year payout, which would put the life expectancy of a teacher hired at age 23 and retiring after 37.5 years at 90.5 years, but he is in the ballpark.

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Doug Schwartz
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Worrisome Figures

The teachers' unfunded pension liability has gone from $4 billion to nearly $6 billion over the past four years [Connecticut section, March 1, "Teachers Want Attention To Pensions"]. A teacher gets 75 percent pay after 37.5 years of service, accruing 2 percent per year.

The Connecticut Education Association indicates that presently the average pension is $36,000, but the new crop of retirees is getting more and the average will increase. If a teacher retires at $63,000, the pension is $48,750. The present value of a teacher's retirement plan using these figures is $749,406 (assuming 5 percent rate and 30-year payout).

With 50,000 teachers all owed three-quarters of a million dollars, you can see where the problem comes in. How many parents have three-quarters of a million dollars put away? Once these numbers are known, private-sector citizens with no pension or health care will see how untenable the situation is and demand changes.
Arthur J. Landry, Milford

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Jim Hoover, jim.hoover@sbcglobal.net

Vernon Taxpayers Association

Easy Street

March 19, 2006

Every once in awhile I take out my calculator.....and it's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.....�� For example: Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 Billion to rebuild New Orleans.....�� Interesting number, what does it mean?
Well, if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans every man, woman, child), you each get $516, 528.� Or, if you have one of the 188, 251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1, 329,787.�� Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2, 066,012.�� Hello Washington, D.C. !!!...........................Are all your calculators broken?????�� Tell you what.....just flood our house, and we' ll be on the "big easy" street for the rest of our lives!!!

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Robert Green, rgreen619@snet.net

Salem Board of Education, FCTO Board Member

Education Budgets

March 24, 2006

Good morning, Sue.� At last night's BOF meeting, the Board of Ed gave up a little over a mil (about $280,000) in its budget for next year to bring the total budget increase to about 7 percent. Other than deferring much needed capital projects for the umpteenth year, the really unique action we took was that we removed most of the projected state reimbursements for the next school year. I will go out on a limb here and say that we, most likely, are the only district in the state to do so. The entire town budget is tentatively forecasting a mil increase of about 2.7. We were looking at 4.5 before last night's meeting.� Bob

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