Category Archives: State Senate

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Keynesian Theory in 5 min

The elected officials are unable to quit their spending addiction because they do not plan to have to pay for any of the debt that they are creating…

#TaxationIsTheft

Plain and simple they feel they are entitled to steal our families money to spend it any way that they feel that they want to. They are without concern about the pain that it creates to our families or the actual damage that it does to our state. 

 

Cross posted item from another Tillett4CT project

After watching this short video do you want to continue on the current path which we are on or do you want to start on a new path which cuts out the wasteful spending and starts us down a path of sanity so that children and grandchildren can have better lives?

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Author: Tillett for Connecticut

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1st Congressional CT GOP Governor Candidate Debate Video

The CT GOP is trying something new this election season with the governorship at stake…

For the first time they had on Facebook Live streaming on both the Fox61 & CT GOP pages the video streaming of some of their candidates debating.

 First Congressional District Governor Candidate Debate at the Windsor Public High School 6pm to 9pm .

Only a few of the candidates were up on stage because they met the fundraising qualifications set by the party chairman. My understanding is that $75,000.00 minimum had to have been raised to be invited to the debate. There is a combination of both Declared as well as those who only have Exploratory Committees.

Declared Governor Candidate Joe Visconti who did not meet the fundraising qualifications was doing a competing Live Stream on his facebook page so that his critique of the candidates, their answers and some rebuttal to the debate questions – this is similar to what Jill Stein did back in 2016 when she was excluded from the debates.

Below is the video of the debate so that you can watch.

The CT GOP Chairman had a private poll after the debate which the results are being touted on the CT GOP facebook page but sadly the wider republican voting body was not privy to that poll which is quite disappointing. I hope that a better for CT GOP members poll will be emailed out for a true measure of who are the debate winners.

 

  • – The hashtag for the debates and 2018 will be #VoteDemOut – 
    • – Additional hashtags for 2018 #FixCT #AFreshNewStart –
    • – #WinningByWorkingTogether – 

 

CT has a Balanced Budget Under Threat by Lame Duck

Connecticut’s the only state in the USA which is operating without a budget at this point…

With lots of hard work the Republican budget was finally presented, voted upon and PASSED!

This Balanced Budget is under threat by our Lame Duck Governor because it doesn’t Add Tolls and increase spending to his crony friends whose salaries are paid by the CT Taxpayers.

Even before the Balanced Budget was passed by the CT House Malloy was grumpily fussing that he was going to VETO the Republican Budget!

Why would he VETO a Balanced Budget that Saves the Taxpaying citizens of CT money??

The Only Answer is because Malloy does NOT CARE ABOUT CT Taxpayers!

#MalloysMess is growing bigger because he & his party #DemocratsHurtingFamilies are only interested in making themselves RICHER at our expense – Look at how much the democrats rant and rave about cuts to the C.E.P. which gives MILLIONS of Dollars to the candidates and the democrat machine so they do not have to meet the people in person to answer questions in an open debate. That’s just one example

 

Copied & Pasted Facebook Post Below Highlighting of items was done by me to point out items to pay attention to

9/16/17
5:05AM

WE DID IT!

Good Morning, Friends!

As many of you will soon wake up and read this, I am just getting home and finally into bed.

After nearly 9 months of researching, calculating, debating, and finally negotiating, the GOP budget prevailed and therefore has been officially adopted, in a bipartisan manner, by both the Connecticut HOUSE AND SENATE!

A very special thank you to those courageous Democrats who joined us tonight by passing a historic budget for the citizens of our beloved state. I am so grateful to everyone who sent texts, made calls, and created social media posts in order to spread the word over these past two very intense days. This has undoubtedly been an experience that I will never forget. The fight isn’t over, however, but please know what an immense honor it is to be fighting for you and your family.

Now, let’s get our Governor to sign this budget before October 1st.

Please call & tell him to SIGN it!

Phone (860) 566-4840 
Toll-Free: (800) 406-1527
TDD: (860) 524-7397

FY 2018/2019 Budget Summary

No New Taxes & Reduces Taxes 

No increase of the sales tax

No secondary home tax

No cell phone tax

No increase to the cigarette tax

No new tax on nonprescription drugs

No new restaurant sales tax

No increase to the pistol permit fee

No increase to the hotel tax

No new fantasy sports tax

No income tax increase

Restores funding for the state’s property tax credit in its entirety to all families and individuals

Eliminates Social Security income tax and phases out tax on pension income for middle class families

Increases Education Funding

Increases education funding and includes a new ECS formula to fairly distribute aid as well as a council to analyze and make any necessary changes to the new formula within the next year.

Municipal Support and Mandate Relief

Flat funds or increases funding for all municipalities over the biennium.

Stabilizes municipal aid and does not ask towns and cities to pay for teacher retirement costs. Also includes significant municipal mandate relief.

Funds Core Social Services

Restores funding for core social services and programs that benefit people most in need.

Fully funds day and employment services for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, reopens Care4Kids, etc.

Prioritizes Transportation

Prioritizes the state’s transportation needs and stabilizes funding without tolls or new taxes.

Implements the Republican Prioritize Progress transportation funding plan and stabilizes the state’s Special Transportation Plan.

Supports Seniors

Lowers taxes for retirees by eliminating tax on social security for middle class families and phases out pension income tax for those with incomes below a specified threshold.

Helps seniors age in place by restoring and increasing funding for core programs and supports such as Meals on Wheels, the personal needs allowance, non ADA dial a ride, and the CT Home Care Program.

Funds State Parks & Tourism

Enhances funding for state parks/tourism without raising taxes by implementing a new Passport to Parks program and dedicating a portion of the current hotel occupancy tax to a new Marketing, Culture & Tourism account.

Reduces Size of Government

Implements 10% reductions to certain agency accounts, overtime savings of 10%, a hiring freeze on non-24-hour non-union positions, and makes cuts to the legislature such as reducing the number of legislative committees.

Includes Structural Changes

Changes include a spending cap, bonding cap, municipal mandate relief, and other long term savings. Implements pension reform beginning in 2027 after the recently approved SEBAC contract ends.

Recommends rolling forward the FY 2017 holdbacks except for core services that this budget seeks to protect such as grants for mental health and substance abuse, early childhood programs for low income citizens, and youth service bureau funding. Implements 10% reductions to certain agency accounts.

Education

This budget includes a fully revised Education Cost Sharing Formula that takes into account factors regarding CCJEF and Meskill court decisions, enrollment, poverty and wealth. This budget dedicates $33.6 million more to education in FY 2018 and $136.6 million more in FY 2019.

Once fully implemented, the state will be spending $678.7 million more on education funding under this proposal, which also allows for a committee to study and revise the new formula if deemed necessary within the next year. In 2018 all towns and cities will either be held harmless or gain more ECS funding.

Municipal Aid

Flat funds or increases funding for all municipalities over the biennium • Does not require municipalities to assume any costs associated with teachers’ retirement. • Recommends mandate relief to help towns manage their budgets and identify savings for local taxpayers. • Preserves or increases Education Cost Sharing base grants to municipalities (detailed below) • Recommends eliminating the general revenue sharing and car tax portions of the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account (0.5% of the sales tax going to municipalities).

Transportation

• Implements “Prioritize Progress” to provide $62 billion to transportation over 30 years without new taxes or tolls.

• Does not sweep any funding from the Special Transportation Fund.

• Contains multiple policy changes to make the Special Transportation Fund solvent and prevent it from entering deficiency. Will move transportation related revenue into the STF to make solvent through 2022 and beyond.

Tax Reductions

• Exempts all Social Security as of January 1, 2017 for single income tax filers with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) below $75,000 and for joint filers with an AGI below $100,000.
• Phases out the tax on pension income for tax filers with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) below $75,000 and for joint filers with an AGI below $100,000 beginning in 2019.
• Phases in federal exemption of estate tax as governor does
• Lowers lifetime cap on gift and estate tax beginning in 2020 as governor does

Changes to Other Tax Proposals

• Does not raise or expand the sales tax

• Does not have a restaurant tax

• Does not increase cigarette tax, hotel tax or tax on digital downloads

• Does not tax nonprescription drugs

• Rejects proposed pistol permit fee increase

• Restores the $200 property tax credit for ALL qualifying families and individuals. (approximately 874,000 middle class and working poor families).

Social Services

• Provides required funding to reopen programs under Care4Kids

• Fully funds day and employment services for individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

• Restores funding for core social services, including but not limited to:

Meals on Wheels (increases funding)

* mental health and substance abuse treatment

* SAGA, a lifeline for many of CT’s residents who are disabled and unable to work

* School based health clinics, rape crisis, community health services, family resource centers

* Does not annualize holdbacks for domestic violence shelters and services for those with disabilities, employment opportunities for blind and deaf

* Restores funding for regional mental health boards and restores mental health services

* Does not reduce burial benefits for the indigent

Seniors

• Rejects cuts to the CT Home Care Program
• Restores the personal needs allowance
• Social Security income tax exemption and phases in pension income tax exemption
• Restores full Meals on Wheels funding
• Restores funding for non ADA dial a ride and adds more funding
• Phases in Social Security income tax exemption for middle income households

Veterans

Restores funding for veterans’ headstones and burial expenses

Hospitals

• Does not allow municipalities to tax local hospitals and preserves the small hospital pool.
• Accept the hospital settlement agreed to by the Connecticut Hospital Association
• Phases out the hospital tax over time beginning in FY 2020.
• Increase Medicaid rates which protects hospitals from changes on the federal level

Parks

In an effort to stabilize the state’s protection and administration of our natural resources, this budget recommends the establishment of a new Environmental Conservation Account funded with a $5 annual State Parks Pass. This fee will be assessed on motor vehicle registrations. In return, all cars with a Connecticut license plate will be allowed access to state parks and forests without a parking fee. This will allow DEEP to operate in a more business-like fashion.

Tourism

Acknowledging the multiplier effect that tourism has on our economy, the budget proposes to transfer 1.5% of the current hotel occupancy tax to a new Marketing, Culture and Tourism account. This is not a new tax as Democrats have proposed. All current tourism appropriations made from the General Fund are eliminated and all future funding will be made from the new account on a competitive basis. This results in a tourism funding increase and more stability.
Funding is also provided to maintain Connecticut’s rest stops making our state more attractive to visitors.

Reduces Size of Government

• Requires that state agencies shall have no more than one deputy commissioner and have no more than one executive secretary.
• Implements overtime savings of 10%
• Hiring freeze on non-24-hour non-union positions
• Legislatives savings: cuts legislative franking, reduces legislative committees, and reduces sessional staff.
• Implements 10% reductions to certain agency accounts.

Public Safety

• Increases funding for Fire Training Schools
• Provides funding for resident troopers at 85% where the governor eliminates funding
• Preserves funding for Cold Case and Shooting Taskforce
• Provides additional funds to the Chief Medical Examiner beyond the governor’s proposal
Labor This budget proposal includes the savings from the SEBAC deal since it has already been passed by the legislature. Republicans originally proposed an alternative path to labor savings that would have achieved greater savings and allowed us to restore more funding to key programs. But since Democrats approved the labor deal our hands are now tied and the state is locked in to the SEBAC deal. Since the SEBAC deal was approved, our budget was also modified to remove the savings that could no longer be achieved such as savings associated with moving services to nonprofit providers.

The budget also implements pension reform beginning after the SEBAC deal ends in 2027 to achieve $270 million in savings over the biennium from the following changes to state employee benefits: requiring workers to pay the national average towards their retirement benefit, eliminating COLAs until the fund balance of the state employee retirement system is deemed healthy by national standards, eliminating overtime from calculation of final average salary, ceasing the current practice which allows higher paid employees to receive a larger portion of their final average salary as lower pain employees, commonly referred to as a break point.

New Education Cost Sharing Formula:

• Creates council to analyze education funding to make recommendations for the General Assembly to enact changes to the funding formula presented below if they so choose. Increased funding to towns as outlined below will be effective immediately upon passage. If another formula is not developed by the council within a year the following new formula will go into effect for future years.
o Fully functioning formula that factors in current enrollment
o Contains foundation grant of $9,638 based on academic research on the cost of educating a child in CT
o Provides a weight of 30% for students that receive free and reduced priced lunch. Contains an additional weight of 5% for those communities that have more than 75% of its population eligible for free and reduced priced lunch
o Provides a weight of 15% for English language learners
o Provides an additional 3%-6% for communities that have a Public Investment Community Index (PIC) over 300 which costs $9.4 million (For the top 5 towns, we provide an additional 6%, for the next 5 towns, we provide an additional 5%, for the following 5 towns, we provide an additional 4%, and for the last 4, we provide an additional 3% ).The PIC index measures the relative wealth and need of Connecticut town’s by ranking them in descending order by their cumulative point allocations for (a) per capita income, (b) adjusted equalized net grand list per capita, (c) equalized mill rate, (d) per capita aid to children receiving Temporary Family Assistance benefits, (e) unemployment rate
o The proposal weights net equalized grand list at 70% and median household income at 30%
o When the proposed ECS formula is fully implemented, the state will be spending $678.7 million more on ECS
o This proposal recommends flat funding municipalities that would have received a reduction in ECS funding as a result of the formula (primary driver, enrollment declines) in FY 2018. It then would phase in reductions to municipalities over a 10 year period beginning in FY 2019.
o For a municipality that is due to receive an increase due to the formula, this proposal recommends phasing in the increase over a 10 year period beginning in FY 2018 with towns seeing 5% of their new full funding under the formula in FY 2018 and 15% of their full funding in FY 2019. Thereafter towns would receive 10% increases annually until 2028 at which point they would be fully funded under the new formula.
o The budget provides an increase of funding of $33.6 million in FY 2018 and $136.6 million in FY 2019

Special Education

• Similar to the Governor, this proposal seeks to transfer the portion of the ECS grant that is attributed to special education (approximately 22%) and combines the $447 million with the current excess cost account and an additional $10 million creating a combined pool of $597.6 million
• The distribution of these funds will range from 2.5% to 52% and will be distributed based on the equalized net grand list of municipalities similar to the Governor
• Unlike excess cost, the distribution of these monies will be based on previous years’ expenditures rather than a town waiting until the expenditure of a child hits 4.5 times of their per pupil

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DON’T GET RIPPED OFF BY MDC IMPOSTERS

This warning has been given out back in November by me but this warning post from Kevin Brookman is worthy of a share because he actually has the press release in the article that he posted; in addition to his always worthy of a read even if you do not agree with him commentary.

There were 2 Reader comments plus his own reply that should get people asking some questions about our water bills….

Who are the people that are connected to the reasons why our water bills are going up higher than ever while their corporate buddies are getting a sweetheart deal at our expense….

Head on over to We the People Hartford by clicking the “Go to Source” link below & join in on the conversations…. –

 

Full article and community commentary can be found on We the People Hartford Kevin Brookman Editor & Lead Investigative Reporter

 

 

MDC WARNS OF SUSPECTED IMPOSTERS
November 30, 2016
For Immediate Release
HARTFORD  The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) is advising customers to be cautious of an individual posing as a water company employee in an attempt to enter residential homes.
On Tuesday, November 29, a male suspect claiming to be from the water company attempted to gain access to several Hartford apartments in the vicinity of James Street, telling the residents there was a problem with their water bill. No further details are available at this time.
The MDC urges all residents, especially those who are home during the day, to be alert for imposters by following these tips:
  • MDC field employees wear clothing and drive vehicles clearly marked with the MDC logo.
  • The MDC encourages customers to stay secure within the home while asking for identification from anyone who comes to their door.  All MDC employees have photo identification badges and will gladly display them upon request.  The policy is “No Identification – No Entry” .
  • If someone comes to your door claiming to be from the water company and you do not have a previously scheduled appointmentdo not allow access to your home until calling the MDC Command Center at 860-278-7850 ext 3600 to verify their identity.
  • If you have any doubt about the individual’s identity or motives, or authenticity of their credentials, do not allow them entry into your home and call the police.
 
Maybe the next step should be to distribute a flyer of MDC Chairman Bill diBella and the MDC Commissioners to our suburban neighbors. The MDC’s plan to shove Hartford’s debt off onto member towns will cost residents more than any imposters ever could. 

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Title: DON’T GET RIPPED OFF BY MDC IMPOSTERS
Author: KEVIN BROOKMAN

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