Towns Fighting to Save Resident State Troopers
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| Tuesday, March 10th 2009 |
Town officials to fight governor’s plan to cut trooper costs
By The Associated Press (reprinted in its entire form from a Journal Inquirer Artice, dated Wednesday, February 18, 2009)
Towns served by resident state troopers plan to oppose Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s proposal to cut subsidies for the officers. The state has 118 troopers assigned to 57 towns, and the state pays 30 percent of the cost. Rell wants to cut that subsidy to 15 percent next year, then eliminate it in 2010-11. She estimates that requiring towns to pay the full cost would save as much as $8 million in the next two years, helping close deficits of nearly $1 billion this fiscal year and about $8 billion over the next two. The arrangement started in 1947 to help rural towns get better police coverage, rather than just periodic patrols. At the time, the state paid half the cost. The state’s share decreased as dozens of towns joined. “We’ll be fighting this one. There were some things in the governor’s budget that were good for municipalities, but this wasn’t one of them,” said Gian-Carl Casa of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. Towns such as Tolland and Ellington have five resident troopers each, and the state’s share for those towns alone is nearly $300,000 a year. Critics complain that towns with their own forces are subsidizing a service for small towns. Leaders of the small towns argue that much of the tax revenue from their communities gets pumped into big cities. “Small towns cannot afford all the additional expenses shifted by the state to the property tax owners,” Andover First Selectman Robert Burbank said. “The revenue to towns is being decreased ... yet our taxpayers are still paying their state income and sales taxes and have increases in state fees for many services. Is it fair to keep piling on additional burdens?”
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