June 24, 2005

EASTERN CONNECTICUT WOULD GET MORE SLOT FUNDS IN BUDGET BILL
House passes measure; Senate action pending

By Ted Mann, Day Staff Writer

Hartford - A budget bill approved Thursday night by the state House of Representatives would significantly boost eastern Connecticut's share of slot machine proceeds from Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun.

A provision buried in the language of the $31.2 billion budget would require that one-third of any increase in the total amount of slot revenue paid to the state -- projected at about $4.8 million -- be redistributed to all 169 cities and towns in fiscal 2007.

A third again of that increase -- about $1.6 million -- would be reserved for the 21 eastern Connecticut municipalities that say they have borne the brunt of the rapid growth of the casinos run by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes.

The funding pales in comparison to the more than $400 million the two tribes will pay to the state annually, and is not scheduled to continue beyond the 2007 fiscal year.

But the inclusion of the increase -- in addition to payments of $750,000 for the five towns immediately surrounding the two casinos -- represents a major victory for lawmakers from eastern Connecticut, who have long sought a greater share of the windfall the state has received from the casinos.

Lawmakers from the region, several of whom had pressed leaders for support all year, were delighted.

“I am absolutely thrilled with the effort,” said Rep. Melissa Olson, D-Norwich, giving much of the credit to House Speaker James Amann and Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, who pledged even before the session to help the region increase its aid.

“They gave us their word that they would work on this with us,” Olson said. “They followed through on their promise and that really means so much for us.”

Rep. Tom Reynolds, D-Preston, noted that the delegation had succeeded not only in securing an increase in aid for all Connecticut towns, but also had ensured that the existing payments to the five towns around Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods would increase and no longer be subject to reduction in lean budget years.

The state budget would provide annual “impact aid payments” totaling $750,000 each for Ledyard, Montville, Norwich, North Stonington and Preston, intended to defray a variety of costs the communities say they have incurred as a result of the casinos. Those costs, municipal leaders and their representatives have said, include sharp increases in traffic safety and road maintenance, and the struggle to absorb casino workers and their families into the existing real estate market and public schools.

All session long, the legislature's new leadership has seemed more receptive to increasing impact aid than others in the past.

Amann met early in the session with the delegation and appointed a Democrat from the eastern end of the state, Rep. Denise Merrill of Mansfield, to be the new chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee.

The agreement also showed the influence of Senate President Pro Tempore Donald E. Williams, D-Brooklyn.

While earlier efforts to boost aid to the host towns were restricted to those clustered close to the casinos, the roughly $1.6 million to be paid out in 2007 would be distributed to all members of the Southeastern Connecticut Council of Governments, but also to towns farther north, including Putnam, Willimantic and Killingly, in Williams' district.

That helped provoke a skeptical series of questions from Rep. William Dyson, D-New Haven, the former appropriations chairman who has opposed the impact aid payments, saying they add disparity to the Pequot Fund grants.

The new change in the formula “does a disservice to the chamber and to the state itself,” Dyson said, adding that the legislature was creating “a new formula, arbitrarily decided upon and meeting a disparity that I think we'd have to overcome in the future.”

But local legislators and Council of Governments members, who helped draft early proposals to tinker with the grant formula, had said that ensuring that all towns got more funding would make the hike for eastern Connecticut easier to accept -- not, in Reynolds' term, a “parochial” benefit for one region.

And the lawmakers didn't mind sharing with the Senate president, if it meant getting the aid they have fought for.

“You gotta get everybody on board,” Amann said after the bill passed late Thursday.

“I'd give up a little to get a lot,” said Rep. Ernest Hewett, D-New London.

Now, the focus shifts to the future, and the eastern delegation's attempt to convince the rest of the legislature and Gov. M. Jodi Rell's budget staff that the new formula should be made permanent, providing annual increases in aid statewide -- with extras closer to home -- as both casinos embark on continued expansion.

“We still need to convince them that it's a fair way to provide for all the towns,” said Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, but he and others agreed that would be easier to do, once all the parties had agreed to try it their way.

“That gives us a platform to continue to work on increasing aid next year,” said Olson. “We've got a platform. We've got a structure.”

The provision is one of several in the new budget that will affect cities and towns in the region. The budget also would direct $500,000 annually to the city of New London, as payment in lieu of taxes for hosting the Coast Guard Academy. The academy was not previously included in payments to the city for non-taxable land occupied by colleges and hospitals.

The bill, the final of three so-called “implementers” that allocate the funds approved in the new budget, also held some of the usual items tacked on for individual legislators, known around the Capitol as “rats.”

One of those, added by Amann, would have created an exemption to the state's smoking ban for pari-mutuel gambling facilities, including the off-track betting facility at the Plainfield Greyhound Track. But he removed it after a meeting of his caucus, in which several legislators vigorously protested.

“I guess rats are in the eye of the beholder,” he said, smiling.

The Senate is expected to take up the budget bill Monday.

© The Day Publishing Co., 2005