Greenwich

This past Monday, the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting (RTM) approved the record-high $688 million FY27 budget. The amount includes a more than doubling of the capital budget to $92 million. The budget was approved without any major changes to the preliminary proposal submitted by the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which is expected to set the final mill rate early next week.

We are concerned that many residents will see materially higher property tax bills beginning this July.

Nor is this likely to be merely a one-year spike. Longer term, the Town’s Capital Plan projects that elevated capital spending will continue for at least the next three fiscal years, averaging approximately $130 million for the General Fund alone, and roughly $200 million in total when sewer improvements are included.

State of Connecticut

We are equally concerned about the State budget. Last week, the Connecticut General Assembly concluded its budget session. Senator Ryan Fazio and State Representative Tina Courpas provided an excellent summary, currently available on the RTC website.

As noted by Fazio and Courpas, the new budget “blew through CT’s Fiscal Guardrails” by $814 million, primarily to fund what they described as “one-time election-year payouts.”

The fiscal guardrails were enacted in 2017 to restrain the very type of irresponsible budgeting that had repeatedly pushed Connecticut toward fiscal crisis. Former State Senator Scott Frantz helped lead that effort during a period of evenly divided control in the State Senate. The guardrails placed limits on spending and borrowing and required volatile revenues — particularly capital gains taxes — to be saved rather than immediately spent.

Those reforms helped stabilize Connecticut’s finances, improve reserves, and restore a measure of fiscal credibility after years of chronic deficits, downgrades, and economic stagnation.

Now, Hartford Democrats are dismantling those protections.

Representatives Steve Meskers and Hector Arzeno voted in favor of the budget despite its circumvention of the guardrails and its significant increase in long-term spending commitments.

Equally disappointing was the Legislature’s approval of additional increases in State employee compensation. Connecticut already has some of the highest-paid state employees in the country, with compensation and benefit obligations that taxpayers will continue funding for decades through salaries, pensions, and retiree healthcare costs.

Greenwich taxpayers shoulder a disproportionate share of these burdens. Moreover,  State labor agreements often become the benchmark for municipal labor negotiations, putting additional upward pressure on local budgets and property taxes.

The pattern is becoming familiar: higher spending, larger long-term obligations, weakened fiscal discipline, and taxpayers left to absorb the consequences.

We encourage residents to attend the annual Legislators’ Wrap-Up, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greenwich, on May 27. Senator Fazio and Representative Courpas will be participating on the panel.

The Bottom Line

For the past term, Connecticut Democrats have held a "veto-proof" supermajority in both the State House (102-49) and Senate (25-11), allowing them to override gubernatorial vetoes. This power enables the party to pass legislation, including budgets, largely unilaterally, though leaders have expressed intent to continue working with the governor.

One of the consequences has been more ‘far-left’ Democratic legislative initiatives, that would limit our freedoms, our rights, and ultimately the quality of our life.

Reminds us of the aphorism "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" written by the 19th-century British historian and moralist Lord Acton...

…or, as California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has recently expressed about a state in similar circumstances to Connecticut:

“The story is very simple. This is what you get in California when Democrats get everything they want. They've had 16 years of having total control over everything — each chamber, all the big counties, all the big cities, the state supreme court, which are highly politicized in California, a 6-1 Democrat majority, absolutely everything. There's no excuse. There's no hiding place, and the results are a complete catastrophe.”

So, what to do? To paraphrase Hilton, simple. Let’s support our candidates this Fall, get the message out, and get the vote out.