Connecticut Municipal Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility

 

 

The map showing Connecticut towns and districts who have officially endorsed the Consortium has been updated! If the boards in your town have not yet signed on, we encourage you to contact the members and let them know about this important group

 

Congratulations to the Consortium’s Newest Members…

 

The Boards of Finance of Trumbull and Westport

 

 

        The genesis of the Consortium – a broad alliance of duly elected town boards from a host of municipalities throughout Connecticut – comes in response to the growing wave of taxpayer discontent and local budget defeats we have witnessed over the past couple of years. The rate of rejections remains high while local property tax rates increase at around 5% per year. At the same time, overall municipal employment declines and existing program is squeezed out of budgets in town after town, victims of unbridled compensation and other state interventions into our local budgetary affairs.

Our focus is primarily on the cost-management side of the equation.  Our mission is to press for return to the local level of a greater ability to manage key elements in our own municipal budgets.

The platform planks are all common threads of the legislative agendas of the three major municipal advocacy organizations – CCM, COST, and CABE – and call for leveling the playing field under binding arbitration, raising the cost thresholds on capital projects under prevailing wage laws, and prohibiting new mandates placed on  towns until state government meets its own existing funding commitments to the towns under current law. Very simply, our joint message to the Capitol is to untie our hands so that we are more able to better and more efficiently manage our own local affairs.

          These themes reinforce our view that our cause is pro-local government… pro-education… and pro-taxpayer. Then our growing group of town boards, and board chairmen, representing a broad and diverse group of municipalities throughout Connecticut, seeks to deliver a common message with a unified voice to legislators and the legislature… a message that truly is across-the-boards…across-the-parties… and across-the-state.

We encourage the governing authorities in every town and city - Boards of Selectmen, Education, Finance, Alderman, and Town Councils - to join us by endorsing the Consortium effort and by participating in pressing state lawmakers for change.

 

Has your town joined with the Consortium yet?

We may be reached through the following members:

 

Mike Guarco, Chairman             Mike Zelasky, Chairman            George McLaughlin, Chairman

Granby Board of Finance           Lisbon Board of Finance            New Milford Board of Finance

budgetguru06035@aol.com        MikeZelasky@adelphia.net        geomcljr@charter.net

 

Richard Burke                           John Adams, Chairman              Cal Heminway, Chairman

Oxford Board of Finance           Granby Board of Selectmen       Granby Board of Education

Richard.Burke@asml.com         jadams@rizzo.com                    calhemin@sbcglobal.net

 

WHAT YOU CAN DO

TO SUPPORT THE CONSORTIUM EFFORT

 

   Initial steps: 

Secure endorsement from the Boards in your town

            Finance, Education, Selectmen/Town Council

 

Encourage the BOF Chair, or his designee, to participate in the development of county-wide associations that will combine to form a statewide network.

 

   Long-range:

Educate yourself and others on how and why reducing the slope of the cost curve allows more flexibility in providing program and reducing tax rate increases.

 

Meet with your local legislators on these issues and let them know why change is

            important to your town, and townspeople.

 

            Be an advocate for the issues:

                        Take the message to the Capitol, to your legislative delegation and others.

Testify when the call goes out on a useful bill relating to our agenda.

 

Help us to broaden the Consortium roster by securing support from town boards that agree with our mission.  Their support is very important and that of the Finance Chair is vital.

 

If you would like to become more active, you are most welcome to join us in reaching out to those in other towns and spreading the message.  Please feel free to contact any of those listed below.

 

Mike Guarco, Chairman             Mike Zelasky, Chairman            George McLaughlin, Chairman

Granby Board of Finance           Lisbon Board of Finance            New Milford Board of Finance

Budgetguru06035@aol.com       MikeZelasky@adelphia.net        geomcljr@charter.net

 

Richard Burke                           John Adams, Chairman              Cal Heminway, Chairman

Oxford Board of Finance           Granby Board of Selectmen       Granby Board of Educatiuon

Richard.Burke@asml.com         jadams@rizzo.com                    calhemin@sbcglobal.net

 

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Excerpts from Past Editorials from two distinquished publications….

Republican-American -   Waterbury, Connecticut   

EDITORIAL       

Taxpayers' friend

 In a state dominated by socialist politicians subservient to public-employee unions, what Big Labor says goes.

Breaking labor's stranglehold on taxpayers will not be easy, but it's a fight worth winning, and taxpayers now have another important ally in that fight: the bipartisan Connecticut Municipal Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility.

The consortium's goal -- to fix the fundamental flaws of compulsory arbitration in public-employee-union contracts -- should be the No. 1 priority of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and its ilk. Unfortunately, those organizations, like the legislature and much of the executive branch, have been hijacked by the unions and thus give only lip service to reforms when they are raised every spring at the Capitol.

Given the odds of success, the fight for reform must go on 24/7, and those in the trenches must be tireless and relentless. And that's where the consortium can play its most vital role.

The consortium is led by Michael Guarco, chairman of Granby's finance board who understands that fiscal responsibility will be impossible in Connecticut as long as unelected arbiters wield their biased influence over the process and have the final say on what's reasonable and necessary.

Mr. Guarco and just about every municipal and state official know arbitration forces governments to devote ever larger shares of their annual budgets to employee wages and benefits. They know arbitration robs local governments of their ability to address local needs and priorities. But the biggest difference is Mr. Guarco is willing to take on the powerful special interests who enjoy putting the screws to helpless taxpayers.

The consortium's objective: amend labor laws that protect unions while driving state and local taxes ever higher. He and the consortium deserve the immediate and wholehearted support of municipal boards in Greater Waterbury, the Naugatuck Valley and Litchfield County.

But that backing must be more than just the adoption of a single, strongly worded resolution.

Members of boards of selectmen, finance and education, as well as town councilors and aldermen, must be willing to put in the time to agitate for arbitration reform. They must testify at legislative hearings, speak to community groups and take every opportunity to raise the issue of arbitration reform at any public forum.

They must get behind candidates for local and state offices who share their view that the effects of binding arbitration may be seen in Connecticut's deteriorated infrastructure, in underfunded state and local pension funds, in reduced municipal and state services, in narrowed school curriculums and in the rampant corruption in state government. Those unwilling to make the commitment should step aside in favor of those who are willing.

As veterans of the arbitration-reform effort, we know the consortium is in for a long, hard, frustrating fight.

It cannot expect help from Big Labor's lackeys in the legislature or from a news media reflexively sympathetic to union causes. In the face of determined resistance from the entrenched special interests, the consortium and its allies must not waver.

Only when taxpayers or people accountable directly to them have the final say on union contracts will governments be able to control their fiscal destiny and taxpayers secure genuine tax relief.

 

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Voicesnews.com

By: Leda Quirke

OXFORD - There's strength in numbers, especially when it comes to effecting reforms for the economic betterment of the community.

That was the message imparted by Mike Guarco, a spokesman for the Connecticut Municipal Consortium for Fiscal Responsibility, to representatives of boards of finance, education and selectmen from the towns of Oxford, Woodbury Naugatuck, New Milford and Monroe.

Mr. Guarco, who also is chairman of Granby's Board of Finance, was invited to Oxford Town Hall last Thursday evening by the local finance board to provide information about the consortium, which was founded in December and now has representation from 60 of the state's 169 towns and from 75 municipal boards.

The consortium's mission, Mr. Guarco said, is to encourage local officials and their advocacy groups to communicate and work together for common objectives, to educate the Legislature about common problems and to lobby for legislative changes that permit communities to live within their means without negatively impacting services and taxes.

Issues the consortium has identified as needing reform include the lack of local control over expenditures such as salaries and benefits and the cumulative impact of unfunded mandates.

The consortium was created in response to growing dissatisfaction among taxpayers which has been evidenced over the last few years by the budget defeats in a growing number of towns, Mr. Guarco said.

Its agenda, which is similar to those of three major municipal advocacy groups - the Connecticut Council of Municipalities, the Council of Small Towns and the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education - is to level the playing field under binding arbitration, raise cost thresholds on capital projects under prevailing wage laws and prohibit new mandates until state government meets its existing funding commitments to towns under current law.

Mr. Guarco noted that town budgets, which through the 1990s increased 2 to 3 percent annually, have, in the last three or four years, reflected increases of 4 to 4.5 percent.

At the same time, unemployment is increasing and the level of service is declining.

"In many towns we see program after program falling from the budget with money going to pay for salaries and new mandates," he said.

 Mr. Guarco said the consortium, whose membership is concentrated now in the Hartford and Litchfield areas, is seeking to add to its roster representatives from the boards of selectmen, education and finance from more towns.

"If cost control is important in your community, this is a way to pursue it," he told attendees.

Asked by local Board of Finance Chairman Tom Kelly how the consortium would use local support, Mr. Guarco responded that a grass roots effort was needed to reach legislators.

"The folks at CABE, COST and CCM, which are part and parcel of this development, need grass roots to weigh in," he said.

He said a few members probably can't be effective, but a consortium of 100 towns with 70 or more members can make a difference.

When the boards of selectmen, finance and education deliver the same message, the effect is even more dramatic, he suggested.

Oxford finance board member Dick Burke, who learned about the consortium in a newspaper article and who persuaded the finance board to invite Mr. Guarco to a meeting, suggested that the consortium needed to make communities aware of their existence and their mission.

"If I hadn't read the article, none of us would be sitting here tonight," he said.

Mr. Burke suggested that newsletter mailings might be one way to make get other communities on board.

Asked how communities could join, Mr. Guarco said all that was necessary was to have town boards adopt a resolution endorsing the consortium's mission statement.

Mr. Burke said after the meeting that he hoped that the consortium grows.

"This grass roots effort has to become more structured to keep it together," he said.

Selectman Dave Haversat and Board of Education Chairman Robert DeBisschop said they would take the proposal to their respective boards for their endorsement.

Mr. DeBisscchop said he believed the consortium had significant merit.

"The bigger we make that group, the better off the local board will be," he said.

Mr. DeBisschop said he agreed that the issues of binding arbitration and unfunded state mandates needed to be addressed. In short, they're "killing us," he said