From: Susan Kniep, President
The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Inc. (FCTO)
Website: http://ctact.org/
email: fctopresident@aol.com
860-528-0323 or 860-841-8032
July 11, 2008
Welcome to
Tax Talk 119
Our economy is
spiraling out of control!
Latest news on
Mortgage Meltdown included!
Contained in Tax
Talk 119
- Today’s Mortgage
Meltdown
- 29 STATES FACED TOTAL
BUDGET SHORTFALL OF AT LEAST $48 BILLION IN 2009
- Lieberman standing strong on school choice by Tom Durso
- Enfield Citizens Audit receives recognition
outside of Connecticut
- Armand Fusco offers to assist others
with similar audits
- State budget will get worse before it
gets better
- New Yorkers suggest - Impose a state cap on school property taxes
- Stonington Budget Heads For Fifth Vote
- Ex-State
Highway Engineer Pleads Guilty To Taking Corrupt Payments
*******************************
Click to read …. On
the Ballot in November
IN NOVEMBER, PLEASE VOTE YES
ON THE STATEWIDE BALLOT QUESTION:
SHALL THERE
BE A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION TO AMEND OR REVISE THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
STATE?
WORK FOR
CITIZEN EMPOWERMENT THROUGH THE RIGHT OF STATEWIDE INITIATIVE AND
REFERENDUM
**************************
Today’s Mortgage Meltdown
Fannie and Freddie: A wild
ride
Shares of mortgage
finance firms recover most of deep losses from earlier in day on assurances
that government takeover is not needed. more
The $5 trillion mess
Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac were created to help more Americans buy homes. Now they threaten
the entire housing market. more
**************************
29 STATES FACED TOTAL BUDGET
SHORTFALL OF AT LEAST $48 BILLION IN 2009 http://www.cbpp.org/1-15-08sfp.htm
**************************
The following appeared in the Waterbury Republican on July 7, 2008
Lieberman standing strong on school choice
Op Ed By Thomas P. Durso of Watertown
Tom writes on political and economic issues
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., is not referred to often as a freedom
fighter even though he did help with civil-rights battles in the South during
the early 1960s. Today, Lieberman has joined in another civil-rights issue: the
right of Washington, D.C., children to a decent K-12 education as
the children of most members of Congress and presidents provide for their own
children.
The four-year-old Opportunity Scholarship
Program, which provides $7,500 vouchers to more than 2,000 D.C. children to
attend the private school of their choice, is up for renewal. Lieberman has
written D.C.'s delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Rep. Jose E. Serrano,
chairman of an Appropriations subcommittee, pleading they do nothing to
"adversely alter the OSP authorizing language at this time."
When former Education Secretary Rod Paige called the largest teachers union,
the National Education Association, a "terrorist organization," he
didn't mean it in the sense of al-Qaida or Hezbollah. Paige was referring to
the union's campaign to kill the Opportunity
Scholarship Program. Leading the charge in urging House appropriators to
eliminate funding for the program is Del.
Holmes Norton, whose two children attended non-public schools.
In published articles and Senate floor speeches, Lieberman has been calling for
voucher experiments for almost 20 years. Unfortunately, he was rather quiet on
the topic when Congress was controlled by the pro-school-choice Republican
Party under President Bush. Regrettably, Lieberman chose not to stand up to the
government education establishment as courageously as when he withstood the
withering attacks for supporting the war against Islamofascism.
However, Sally Sachar and Byron Davis of the Opportunity Scholarship Program told me Lieberman has
been a reliable and forceful ally in the war against the D.C. government's K-12
monopoly. Today, 21 states and cities allow some form of K-12 school choice.
According to the Friedman Foundation (www.friedmanfoundation.org), Florida's McKay voucher
program for disabled students ranks highest because of
minimal restrictions and generous funding for participating schools.
Other school-choice programs provide for tax credits and deductions for parents
who send their children to private or parochial schools.
The Friedman Foundation has published its Grading
School Choice: Evaluating School Choice Programs by the Friedman Standard,
which is school choice for all, not just for some.
Lieberman spokesmen have told me the senator supports school choice, but
observers know he must act within Democratic political realities. A few years
ago, Lieberman's former press secretary Dan Gerstein, writing in The Wall
Street Journal, flatly warned his Democratic Party to dump its association with
the teachers unions because of the political liability with the nation's
taxpayers and voters.
Eventually, Connecticut's
inner-city parents will awaken and demand their children's liberation from the
one-size-fits-all government-school monopoly. One has to wonder how our urban
state lawmakers face their trapped constituents knowing they are complicit in
keeping them on the government-school plantation while the school-choice
movement slowly but inexorably grows in other states.
I disagree with Lieberman on his big-government solutions to many of the
nation's economic problems, including his support of extreme measures to combat
supposed man-made global warming and his resistance to drilling for oil and
natural gas under our own continent.
But his defense of Washington's
children in the face of the powerful government education empire warrants the I, for independent, after his name.
***********************
Lieberman Appeals to Delegate,
Appropriators to Protect Opportunity
Scholarship Program http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=299156
***********************
Note from FCTO:
Tom Durso is also the Treasurer of
FCTO.
The following web links will take you to additional reports
on School Choice:
http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/friedman/research/ShowFilteredResearch.do?method=date
http://www.schoolchoices.org/
http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=section&pSectionID=14&cSectionID=37
http://www.allianceforschoolchoice.org/New/index.html
***********************
Enfield Audit Committee
Again, Congratulations to Sue Lavelli-Hozempa,
Armand Fusco and all members of
the Citizens Audit Committee of Enfield
who received great press on their recent audit which was covered beyond
Connecticut as the following link to the Orlando Sentinel illustrates. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/hc-enfaudit0701.artjul01,0,1331676.story
The following is a message from Armand Fusco
as well as links to local news articles.
From: Armand Fusco, fusco.a@comcast.net
RE: School Audit
Reports
Susan - You should have received the audit reports from Sue Lavelli-Hozempa of Enfield.
The results speak for themselves and demonstrate that ordinary citizens when
properly trained and directed can be a tremendous force in uncovering waste and
mismanagement. Yet, they have only scratched the surface and they know
there is far more that needs to be done. It is a great start and a great
model for the rest of the state. So let
your taxpayer groups know that if they want to start an audit committee, I can
help them do so at no cost. Armand
***********************
Enfield school board’s audit committee
recommends use of teacher interns, better management of energy, assets
By Kristen J. Tsetsi , Journal Inquirer, July 2, 2008
http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2008/07/09/towns/enfield/doc486b93b642cd1014589266.txt
Enfield Panel
Recommends Better School Budgeting System
By LARRY SMITH | Courant Staff Writer , July 1, 2008
http://www.courant.com/community/news/en/hc-enfaudit0701.artjul01,0,6924131.story
***********************
State budget will
get worse before it gets better
Democrats don’t like Rell’s cuts
By Keith M. Phaneuf , Journal Inquirer
Published: Thursday,
July 10, 2008 8:28 AM EDT
HARTFORD — Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s
budget director had a succinct answer Wednesday for legislators who didn’t like
the cuts the governor ordered last month to stem a $150 million deficit: Get
ready for more pain.
Office of Policy and Management Secretary
Robert L. Genuario warned the Appropriations
Committee about nearly $90 million in potential cost overruns for 2009 — in addition to the deficit already forecast — and added
that nearly all state tax revenue sources are either losing ground or showing
significantly reduced growth. Continued
…. http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2008/07/10/connecticut/doc487600384ea2d282849200.txt
***********************
New Yorkers suggest….
Impose a state cap on
school property taxes
THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2008 Watertown News, New
York
The time has come for school property tax
cap/elimination. `Seventy-two percent of New Yorkers support school property
tax relief, two-thirds reject the argument that a cap would hurt education, New
York state property taxes are 79 percent higher than the national average,
businesses are leaving the state, people are leaving the state, the list goes
on and on. Lobbyists and special
interest groups have a stranglehold on the New York state Legislature. The legislators
listen to them more than they do us, the taxpayer and the voter. We have to
become more active in letting these folks know our concerns. Write your
legislator and voice your position. These folks are supposed to be your representatives,
not the special interest groups. Continued … http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20080710/OPINION02/118901548/Impose+a+state+cap+on+school+property+taxes
***********************
***********************
The Feds again come to rescue Corrupticut…. And again Ct taxpayers are the victims…
Ex-State
Highway Engineer Pleads Guilty To
Taking Corrupt Payments By EDMUND H. MAHONY |
Courant Staff Writer , July 8, 2008
A former state highway
engineer pleaded guilty in federal court Monday to taking corrupt payments from
an employee of a private construction company involved in the disastrous $50
million improvement project on I-84, according to knowledgeable sources and
court records.
Christopher Gallucci pleaded guilty in U.S. District
Court in New
Haven to conspiring to solicit and receive
corrupt payments and failing to declare money, gifts, hotel accommodations and
other benefits as income, the U.S. attorney's office said Monday.
Nothing emerged in court Monday tying Gallucci to the
failed I-84 project in Waterbury and Cheshire. But more than a year ago, the federal grand jury, which
began probing the I-84 work before expanding to other state highway projects,
subpoenaed business e-mail accounts used by Gallucci
and 10 other employees of the state Department of Transportation.
Gallucci pleaded guilty Monday after federal
prosecutors filed a document in court accusing him and unidentified others of
conspiring between 1997 and 2007 to take things of value in return for providing favorable treatment to a company
doing business with the state DOT.
Federal prosecutors did not identify the company, but other knowledgeable
sources said it is the now defunct L.G. DeFelice
construction company of New Haven. DeFelice won the
state contact to improve I-84 before ceasing business for what it said were
financial reasons following the 2005 construction season. The company also had
at least one contract associated with replacement of the highway bridge that
carries I-95 over the Quinnipiac
River in New Haven.
Gallucci could not be reached for comment Monday. An
attorney representing DeFelice said late Monday that
he and his clients were stunned by the guilty plea. We are
completely surprised by this and we are not in a position to comment,
attorney Ray Garcia said.
The I-84 problems range from bad surveys to shoddy
workmanship. Bridges were built incorrectly, an access ramp was mislocated, light poles were poorly welded, guardrails were
insufficiently anchored, the concrete median barrier is flaking and the
drainage system is largely inoperable. The state has hired a contractor to
resolve the problems and complete the improvement project.
There is nothing in the materials filed in court by prosecutors Monday that
implicates DeFelice as a business entity in crimes.
Although Gallucci and the others are accused of
providing benefits to the company, they are accused elsewhere in the document
filed by prosecutors of taking things
of value, to include trips, cash, and a risk-free business opportunity from an unidentified officer
of the company.
According to the document, the benefits Gallucci and
the unnamed others are accused of providing to DeFelice
include, but are not limited to,
facilitating payments to the contractor and willfully and knowingly
allowing the contractor to benefit from a favorable lease arrangement to the
detriment of the DOT.
The U.S.
attorney's office said Monday that Gallucci, in a
plea agreement with federal prosecutors, admitted receiving $29,512.28 in
bribes and failing to pay taxes on that amount.
Among other things, the prosecutors said that between October 1997 and October
2003, Gallucci and
others were silent members of a business with officers
of a company doing business with the
DOT.
The knowledgeable sources said the business was the Hard Hat Cafe in North
Haven, a bar and restaurant operated by as
many as nine DeFelice employees.
Records on file with the state liquor commission show that the Hard Hat Cafe was
sold in October 2003. State liquor regulators have on file a copy of the bill
of sale signed by Biagio Fronte,
who has been identified in state DOT records as a DeFelice
general superintendent.
Federal prosecutors, according to the document filed in court Monday, said Gallucci's involvement in the business was concealed and
that he profited from it while bearing no financial risk. The prosecutors said Gallucci received an $8,000 pay-out at the time of the sale
of the bar.
Under his plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Gallucci
faces from 24 to 30 months in prison when he appears before U.S. District
Judge Mark Kravitz for sentencing on Sept. 26.
Contact Edmund H. Mahony at emahony@courant.com.
*******************************