By CHRIS POWELL
Despite the conscientious work demonstrated last week in its report about easing the burden of property taxes, the Connecticut Citizens Assembly — a project of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities — didn’t tell the state anything it didn’t know. Mainly the group increased the momentum for having state government assume all municipal costs of “special education,” a compelling idea to which Governor Lamont is sympathetic.
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The costs of “special education” — education for children with learning and physical disabilities and emotional problems — have become huge and are borne disproportionately by the poorest municipalities because that’s where most of those children live. Educating these kids should be a general social cost, not the special responsibility of particular municipalities.
State government doesn’t treat its medical insurance for the indigent as a particularly municipal responsibility, though the indigent also live disproportionately in the cities, but as a state responsibility. “Special education” should be handled the same way.
The challenge is to find the money, which in the end will come from people who don’t live in the cities and poorest suburbs. If political liberalism in Connecticut was not mainly a pious pose, this would have been done long ago.
Part of “special education” reform should include a study of what is causing the rapid increase in the number of “special education” and other “high needs” children. Determining and acting on the cause of the problem is as compelling as fairer sharing of its burden.
The Citizens Assembly endorsed imposing tolls on the state’s expressways, an idea that is radioactive to the governor and most legislators. It’s not that tolls are so bad in principle, since much revenue would come from out-of-staters. The problem is the visibility of tolls. The best taxes are those the public can’t see. State residents rose powerfully against recent proposals for tolls and probably would again even if assured that, as the Citizens Assembly proposes, toll revenue was nominally dedicated to property tax reduction. That would be hard to believe.
The Citizens Assembly proposes requiring state government to tie state financial aid for municipal education to inflation. That might eliminate the General Assembly’s power over a huge annual appropriation and prevent the legislature from evaluating municipal education’s performance. Of course municipal governments and school systems would love that.
The group wants state government to study regionalizing more schools, but that won’t save much money. Connecticut already has many regional schools and regional school districts, probably as many as most people want. They diminish local control, and while regionalizing might eliminate some duplication of services, it would come at the cost of making services more distant from recipients. The big money in schools is not in duplicated services but in personnel costs generally.
The group recommends taxing some nonprofit organizations. There is merit in this, especially in regard to New Haven, where most property is tax-exempt and Yale University owns about 43% of it, $4.5 billion worth. That burden is as unfairly disproportionate to New Haven as the burden of “special education” is elsewhere. State law reasonably could limit a single nonprofit entity’s property tax exemption to $1 billion or $2 billion.
The group also recommends raising income taxes on the rich on the lazy old assumption that it is always fair.
These things might reduce or stabilize municipal property taxes for a year or so. But then property taxes would start rising again. For most property tax revenue is used to compensate unionized municipal employees, they won’t stop clamoring for more, and as long as binding arbitration of their contracts and Connecticut’s minimum budget requirement for school systems remain in place, they’ll always get more.
Indeed, review of the property tax problem should have started with ways to control labor costs, but that would be controversial and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities self-servingly assumes that it’s impossible and that the only solution is higher taxation elsewhere. So ironically the only chance of controlling municipal government employment costs may be to leave property taxes just as burdensome as they are.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
