By TOM SEVIGNY
Published in The Hartford Courant
June 19, 2005
Another spring has arrived in Connecticut, and with it the obligatory haggling
over town budgets. As usual, you have one side that stubbornly demands no
increase in what it rightly perceives as already too high property taxes, and
another side that decries what it views as draconian cuts to the education
budget. Neither side ends up winning.
A modest increase in the mill rate is usually finally approved after lengthy
hearings, but never enough to fully fund all the wished-for education programs.
Both sides leave the process dissatisfied, angry, and all too quick to blame
their local elected officials. The most tragic aspect of this yearly ritual,
however, is the fact that both sides do a lot of talking and shouting, but they
never really take a step back and listen to each other. If they did, they would
discover that we are all players in a game in which the rules are stacked
against us.
In Connecticut we have connected our highest priority and fastest-growing
expense in local budgets - public education - to the slowest-growing source of
revenue - local property taxes. Connecticut's local public education system is
more reliant on the local property tax than all other states in the union
because the percentage of education funding coming from state revenues - 37
percent - is near the bottom (45th) among the states. As a result, the property
tax burden in Connecticut is the third-highest in the nation per capita and
ranks as the 11th-highest in the nation when it comes to the percentage of
personal income going to property taxes. These "rules" are a
prescription for strife, whether evident in failed local budget referendums,
constrained educational investment, or intergenerational struggles over
priorities.
Furthermore, Connecticut's property tax structure has created a competition
among the 169 towns for property tax funds and has put pressure on local
officials to build the grand list by commercially developing available land -
the so-called fiscalization of land use - to offset the high cost of
residential development they can do little to control. The result is urban
sprawl, the loss of farmland and open space, increased traffic congestion, and
a decline in the quality of life in far too many of our communities.
With the rules as they are, local officials are pretty much constrained as to
what they can do about these budgetary and land-use problems. Local officials
are almost forced to produce the results that citizens, frustrated by high
taxes, improperly funded education programs and bad land-use decisions, find so
aggravating.
I am in no way attempting to absolve local officials from blame. In my hometown
of Canton, for example, buying open space could have been made a priority years
ago as a way to mitigate the impact of residential development. Instead, we get
an open space commission with almost no money to purchase property. In
addition, far too many of our local elected officials continue to believe that
we can grow our way out of our financial problems.
For example, the Shoppes at Farmington Valley were hailed as the economic
savior of Canton, yet here we are still unable to fully fund an education
budget despite a 9 percent increase in our grand list. What is going to happen
next year without such an increase? The fact is that we would have to build
almost the equivalent of the Shoppes every year to offset just a 3 percent yearly
increase in Canton's overall budget. If we are unable to control residential
development, no amount of commercial development will be able to offset its
impact on our budget.
Residential development attracts more commercial development which, in turn,
attracts more residential development - it is just a vicious cycle. Property
taxes, already some of the highest in the country, will simply continue to
rise.
So what do we do? First, we need to acknowledge that the rules of the game are
stacked against us. Whether you are for increased education budgets, lower
property taxes, or the preservation of open space, we are all going to lose.
Second, we need to pressure our elected state officials to change the rules.
How the state funds local education needs to be completely overhauled. Simply
put, the state needs to pay its fair share of local education expenditures.
It is imperative to increase the state's share to rectify the imbalance between
state and local contributions to support local education. We should employ a
diverse range of taxes with a broad base, with balance among income, sales, and
property taxes. This means we should specifically avoid a heavy reliance on the
local property tax, which hurts families and businesses, grows revenues slowly,
and contributes to urban sprawl.
Someone once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results. If we don't change the rules of
the game, we will continue to see the same fruitless results every spring. It's
time we embrace the spirit of spring and begin to sow the seeds of change.
Tom Sevigny of Canton is a board member of Canton Advocates for Responsible
Expansion, a member of the Citizens Network "Financing Local
Education" study committee and a member of the Green Party.
Copyright
2005, Hartford Courant