Cafero: Malloy Broke Funding Promise To Norwalk Schools
by Christine Stuart | Feb 15, 2012 6:30am
(4) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Education, Town News, Norwalk, Local Politics
When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy released his budget a week ago he promised no municipality would receive less education funding than it received last year, but House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero said Tuesday that the governor cut $72,000 from his city’s education grant.
Cafero alleges that by eliminating the funding Malloy failed to keep his promise.
“This is not a good start down the road to bipartisanship,” Cafero said.
Norwalk receives an additional $577,000 in education funding under Malloy’s budget, but the budget also eliminates language added back in 2007 that provides an additional $650,000 in funding. The elimination of the language creates a $72,000 deficit.
Cafero said when the additional funding was added—to account for the discrepancies created by the formula—everyone including the co-chairs of the Education and Appropriations Committees and Democratic leadership were in the room and approved of it.
Malloy’s Senior Communications Adviser Roy Occhiogrosso dismissed Cafero’s accusation that the governor failed to keep his promise to make sure not one town would receive less funding than it did last year.
Malloy’s budget adds $50 million to the Education Cost Sharing formula. Under the plan 130 municipalities will see their ECS grants increase, while 39 towns will see theirs remain the same.
“The Governor kept his word; not one town – including Norwalk – will lose ECS funding next year,” Occhiogrosso said. “And the districts where kids need the most help, including Norwalk, will see more funding.“
Occhiogrosso said the provision eliminated from the budget “came about as part of a back room budget deal he cut with Gov. Rell.“
Cafero said it wasn’t done in any back room and everyone, including the Democrats, acknowledged the discrepancies in funding created by the ECS formula. He said Norwalk is treated far differently than any other municipality, including similar ones with fewer students.
He said he doesn’t understand why West Hartford with 1,000 fewer students than Norwalk receives $16 million in funding when Norwalk receives more than $10 million.
He said Norwalk isn’t an affluent suburb like West Hartford, it’s a suburb with pockets of poverty and pockets of wealth. But under the funding formula, he said it’s considered so wealthy it wouldn’t receive any priority school district dollars if this provision wasn’t included in the budget for the past five years.
Occhiogrosso wondered what Cafero promised in return for the additional funding when he cut the deal five years ago.
“Roy’s rush to defend the governor and point a finger proves it was intentional,” Cafero said. “He just confirmed he took away funding from Norwalk.”
The legislation in 2007 never mentioned anything about the City of Norwalk, it simply said, “ the State Board of Education shall allocate six hundred fifty thousand dollars to the town ranked sixth when all towns are ranked from highest to lowest in population, based on the most recent federal decennial census.”
The town ranked sixth is the City of Norwalk.
Some in the legislature have referred to the Norwalk schools funding provision as a “rat.” At the Capitol, a rat is language put into legislation to help one person, town, or special interest group.
Cafero scoffed at the implication. He said the funding formula is unfair and it was added in order to compensate for the fact that the ECS formula is broken and has been for several years. He said he thought the legislature and governor would attempt to fix it this year, but instead they’re just throwing more money at it.
Cafero and the rest of the Norwalk delegation, including Rep. Terrie Woods, R-Darien, and Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, will work with lawmakers to try and correct what they believe was an error on the part of Malloy.
Tags: norwalk, ECS, Lawrence Cafero, Gov. Malloy, Roy Occhiogrosso, education
(4) Comments
posted by: Dempsey Dem | February 15, 2012 10:16am
Once again, if you try to do the right thing, you are subject to Republican attack. All evidence is that Rell or the legislature, cut a deal by bribing the Norwalk Legislators (Wasn’t Cafero part of that delegation?)with a side deal.
When Malloy was campaigning and elected, he promised that these side deals and back-scratching were going to end. It’s a shame that Norwalk kids are going to pay for this kind of political wheeling and dealing, but I guess Cafero will now have to deal openly for funding for his district.
While I’m at it, why is Cafero criticising the Governor for the Governors admission that his budget appears out of balance based on revenue shortfalls, when for the first time, Malloy applied GAP principles to his analysis. He even had the guts to reverse an earlies assessment made by his Comptroller.
posted by: Reasonable | February 15, 2012 12:05pm
Dempsey Dem: Your Democratic party illusion—continues to mislead you, as you attempt to shine Gov. Malloy’s shoes.
posted by: meridenite | February 15, 2012 2:47pm
The only gaps in malloys budget are between actual revenues and budgeted,ther are no gaap principles in any of malloys budgets.
posted by: Reasonable | February 20, 2012 11:18am
DempseyDem: You say when Malloy was campaigning and elected, he promised that these side-deals an back scratching were gpong to end. Gov. Rell was in a different time frame—as she had to make deals with the controlling Democratic Assembly. Malloy doesn’t have to make deals with his Democratic legislature, to SPEND THE STATE BLIND. His Democratic Team Malloy General Assembly supports all of his wild spending. There is no one to stop Dannel (The Wild Spender) Malloy. Our governor has a stacked deck of cards - to play with.
“Please do not distort the truth with political gobbly-gook. Dempsey Dan.”