Connecticut’s mayors and first selectmen said Wednesday it’s inevitable that higher taxes on the state’s wealthiest incomes will be part of this year’s budget solution in the General Assembly.
During a news conference attended by about 200 chief elected officials, budget experts and school administrators, the leaders called for more state funding for education and warned that less state aid will mean higher property taxes locally…
Diane deVries, project director of the Connecticut Coalition for Justice In Education Funding, which is awaiting a decision on state funding in the Connecticut Supreme Court, said neither the governor’s budget, proposed in February, nor the majority Democratic package voted in committee last week, has enough funding through the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) formula.
”Quite simply, flat funding of the ECS is a cut,” she said. “The short-term ramifications of the state’s broken, outmoded school finance system and its heavy reliance on local property taxes are already apparent: inadequately resourced schools, gross inequities of school quality, unacceptably low academic performance by students in far too many communities, and the nation’s worst achievement gap.”