🔒Stakes higher for Hartford’s Bronin

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Can Hartford remain solvent in its next fiscal year without additional financial help from the state legislature?

Mayor Luke Bronin has stopped short of calling it impossible, but he has given every indicator that it would be unlikely.

The first-term mayor — formerly chief legal counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy — contends the city can't cut enough spending to cover the $50 million deficit projected for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2017, while still offering basic vital services. Bronin also perceives little opportunity to generate more revenue locally, hamstrung by the city's high commercial mill tax rate, large amount of untaxable properties and lack of one-off gimmicks such as debt restructuring and property sales.

“I think the city ran out of responsible one-time options a while ago,” Bronin said during a December interview at city hall. “At this point, I think we're just about out of options both responsible and irresponsible.”

Convincing state lawmakers to make major reforms that steer more revenue to cash-strapped cities — whether through sales tax redistributions, payment-in-lieu-of-taxes increases or some other mechanism — will be Bronin's most significant challenge in 2017.

”My No. 1 priority is not the battle we've chosen, it's the battle we have to fight, and that's the battle to get the city of Hartford through a historic fiscal crisis and on the path to fiscal health, and that can't be done through local action alone,” Bronin said. “There aren't enough cuts to be made and we already have taxes that make it awfully hard to grow.”

He also continues the difficult work of trying to convince often skeptical residents of surrounding towns that Hartford is worth bailing out. On Dec. 6, Bronin told a West Hartford audience in a two-plus-hour meeting that a Hartford bankruptcy would be a long, expensive process that would make the Capital City front-page news across the country, without totally solving future deficits.

“It would have enormous reputational costs to us as a state,” Bronin said.

City Council President Thomas “TJ” Clarke II — a Bronin ally and fellow first termer — said another year without major changes in state funding will create “an extremely tight” situation for Hartford.

“We'll be talking about cutting senior centers, rec centers,” decisions that would impact “our most vulnerable populations,” Clarke said.

While he was on Bronin's slate of council candidates in the 2015 election, Clarke said he and the mayor haven't agreed on everything.

Clarke didn't support Bronin's omnibus bill pitched to the state legislature earlier this year, which would have consolidated union bargaining in the city and taken some fiscal oversight powers away from the council, as well as imposed a surcharge on large commercial properties and nonprofits.

It wasn't clear at press time what type of proposal will be pitched this year. Bronin said all options remain on the table and he's been consistently outspoken about what he views as a long-term structural problem that could lead Hartford to bankruptcy if left unchecked.

“I think more than anything else … I just tried to be direct, honest and transparent about both the opportunities and enormous challenges we face as a city,” Bronin said.

Though Clarke said he believes in transparency, he worries that Bronin's outspokenness on the city's financial struggles may have drawn too much negative attention, possibly even from ratings agencies, which have downgraded the city's debt ratings several times this year.

“To me, the communication should have been more carefully scripted,” Clarke said.

But Bronin has no regrets about his approach.

“Anybody who thinks you can hide a crisis of that magnitude from the ratings agencies is fooling themselves,” he said.

As for his first year as mayor, Bronin said he's proud of the tough stance he took on ballpark construction, calling the bond on the developer when work was overdue and over cost.

While that decision may have delayed the project's completion date even further, Bronin said the city was sending a message that no developers are going to take advantage of Hartford — something that's happened in the past.

Bronin also takes pride in regular town hall meetings and in the Hartford Youth Service Corps, a teen employment program he helped launch over the summer.

Despite being the bearer of bad news about the city's finances, he insists he loves being mayor.

“No regrets whatsoever,” he said.

As Clarke sees it, Bronin's strengths lie in his relationships in state government and with other city mayors who he expects will be in his corner come January.

Clarke said he believes state legislators will pull the city back from the brink of insolvency.

“I just hope we can get as much as we can of what we're going to be requesting,” Clarke said. “It's going to be a nail-biting session.”