The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities is attempting to pressure state lawmakers to reconsider a decision to cut $60 million in municipal grants as part of roughly $1 billion in previously approved bonding that could be canceled.
The Finance, Revenue, and Bonding Committee this month approved a bonding package that would cancel $1.06 billion in bonding in an effort to stay under the committee’s own debt limit.
CCM said Wednesday, though, that the proposed package has led the state to withhold $60 million in municipal grants that towns had expected this year.
East Hartford is facing the largest hit in the state, losing just under $4.5 million in aid under the amended package, according to a list CCM provided to reporters.
Ted Fisher, spokesman for East Hartford Mayor Marcia A. LeClerc, said officials are monitoring the situation, but declined to comment further until the legislature votes on the bonding package.
“At this point we’re waiting because nothing’s a done deal,” he said.
Stratford would lose the second highest amount at $3.5 million, while Waterbury and Bristol each would lose roughly $2.5 million.
Locally, Manchester, South Windsor, Windsor, and Windsor Locks also are expecting to each lose more than $1 million in aid.
CCM Executive Director Joseph DeLong said many of the towns were planning to use the money for construction projects scheduled to begin around this time of year.
“Much of the necessary repair and repaving of local roads will come to a halt unless these promised state funds are released right now to all towns,” he said.
Office of Policy and Management Undersecretary of Legislative Affairs Gian-Carl Casa said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget office hopes and expects “that the bond package will be discussed in the context of a larger conversation about what Connecticut can afford.
“This will require difficult choices and we hope they will be made in a bipartisan fashion,” he also said.
The finance committee approved the bonding package on a 50-1 vote during its April 7 meeting.
Prior to the vote, Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, said the package included the cancellation of previously approved bonding to stay under its bonding cap, which limits borrowing to 90 percent of its debt limit.
Leone said last year’s bonding put borrowing at 84 percent of the limit, so he recommended canceling some bonding to allow “room to maneuver” under the committee’s cap should an emergency occur.
The committee’s cap is separate from the self-imposed bonding cap that Malloy imposes on an annual basis for borrowing.
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