Allie-Brennan insists towns should decide whether to regionalize

By Scott Benjamin

BETHEL – State Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan says he’s against forcing regionalization on Connecticut’s 169 municipalities - a topic of considerable discussion through the early weeks of the current session of the General Assembly.

“I personally think that should be left to the towns to decide,” said Allie-Brennan (D-2) of Bethel, who captured his first term last fall in a district that travels through parts of Danbury, Bethel, Redding and Newtown.

CT Mirror has reported that state Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney (D-New Haven) has proposed a town with 40,000 or fewer residents consolidate with a neighboring school district. State Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk) and state Sen. Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) have a package that would force school districts with fewer than 2,000 students to regionalize.

According to CT Mirror, state House Majority Leader Matt Ritter (D-Hartford) that most regional school districts have a regional high school and each town has an elementary school with a small enrollment.

He said he has asked legislative aides to report on state reimbursement funds that have been utilized to upgrade those schools.

“I bet it’s a shocking number,” said Ritter.

I’m not here to tell a town what to do,” Allie-Brennan said in an interview.

Ben Barnes, who recently served eight years as the secretary of the state Office of Policy & Management – the executive branch’s budget arm – under former Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Essex) said last December, according to CTNewsJunkie, that “the state needs to get serious about regionalization.”

Barnes, who is now the chief financial officer for the state Board of Regents for Higher Education, added that the Legislature should “compel mergers” creating regional police, health and school districts.

He indicated that legislators should look at the larger picture and see that, among other things, wealthier communities can operate with less state assistance.

State Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) of Brookfield, whose district borders Allie-Brennan’s district, told Brookfield Patch last December that he supports state incentives to foster regionalization but that the Malloy Administration produced policies “which would effectively force certain municipalities to regionalize under the guise of incentivizing. Threats of significant reductions to municipal funding as an example. These are policies that I in no way support and would work against.”

There also have been proposals for property tax reform, a staple of Democratic gubernatorial since at least 1994 when former state Comptroller Bill Curry (D-Farmington sought the governorship. Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) made it part of his campaign platform last year.

Looney recently proposed abolishing the municipal property tax on vehicles, which would be replaced by a state vehicle tax that would range between 15 and 19 mills with revenue largely going to municipalities that that have large tax-free property owners and funding for public kindergarten through 12^th grade school programs.

Allie-Brennan said that proposal “would benefit Danbury. But you have to consider other towns in my district. I’m not sold on it.”

Harding has said that Lamont, who took office in January, should be focused on addressing a pension system that is only 29 percent funded, according to the report distributed last March by the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness.

Allie-Brennan indicated that the governor and the General Assembly should be reluctant about asking the state employee collective bargaining units for further concessions.

“We’re going to honor that contract,” he said of the 2017 agreement that according to a consultant to the state Office of Policy & Management would save taxpayers $24 billion by 2037 through concessions. The agreement extended the state employees fringe benefits an additional five years, through 2027.

“It’s not proper to keep asking the unions” to make concessions when they have taken considerable steps over the recent years to help lower costs, the state representative said.

Allie-Brennan said he hopes that Lamont and future governors will follow Malloy’s policy of annually funding the pensions for the state employees at an adequate level. Previous governors had not done that, which left the system sorely underfunded.

He said that the sale of some available state assets, such as unused buildings, could help bolster the funding of the pension system.

Lamont is scheduled to deliver his proposed two-year state budget on February 20. Some observers believed that he offered clues in his January 9 State of the State speech that he would ask the collective bargaining units to return to the negotiating table.

Late last year there was a projected $1.7 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year that starts in July. Allie-Brennan said recent reports on revenue indicate it will probably be slightly smaller than that.

Allie-Brennan is a 2009 Bethel High School graduate who went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Marymount Manhattan College. He worked as a congressional intern for former U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D-5) of Cheshire and as an aide to U.S. Rep. Alma Adams (D-N.C.)

He garnered 53 percent of the vote last November to defeat one-term Republican Will Duff of Bethel, whom he had lost to in the 2016 election by 280 votes.

Allie-Brennan said he supports increasing the state minimum wage over five years to $15 an hour, which has been a goal of progressive Democrats during the recent sessions.

However, he said that the General Assembly should study “how it’s going to impact non-profits and small businesses.”

Allie-Brennan said he wants to study Secretary of the State Denise Merrill’s (D-Mansfield) proposal for early voting, a practice that occurs in all but 11 states, before he decides whether he will support it.

She announced in January that she wants to amend the state constitution to make it possible for voters to cast their ballots at least three days before the election.

The Manchester Journal-Inquirer has reported that Merrill’s plan would require a three-fourths majority in both the state House and Senate to get on the ballot in 2020. A similar measure was on the ballot in 2014 and failed by six percent to get the required approval.

The Journal-Inquirer reported that Merrill has said early voting would make it easier for residents with long commutes and busy schedules to cast their ballots, as well as for the elderly and disabled.

Merrill has said that there were long lines in some precincts last November during the historic turnout in the gubernatorial election. She has attributed part of that to reforms that made it possible for Election Day registration, online registration and automatic registration through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Allie-Brennan said at least he supports making it easier to get an absentee ballot.

Former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who is seeking his party’s 2020 presidential nomination, wrote in his 2018 book, “The Right Answer” that there should be a federal holiday on election day to ensure that all potential voters can get to the polls.

Allie-Brennan said he supports having Connecticut adopt a state holiday on Election Day in the presidential and gubernatorial years. However, he added that some businesses are still open on a state holiday and he would want to include provisions that would allow those workers to have at least a small portion of the day off to vote.

The state representative said he opposes former Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2015 proposal to adopt mandatory voting, which he insisted would do the more than anything to transform campaign financing.

“I’m not for not for forcing people to vote,” said Allie-Brennan.

Reportedly, 32 countries have mandatory voting and, according to USA Today, in Australia, for example, the turnout usually exceeds 90 percent.

On education, Allie-Brennan said he opposes continuing the policies of the Malloy Administration to provide more public funding for seats in charter schools.

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, a former social studies teacher, has praised the performance of the small number of charter schools that he has visited. He has been critical of the opposition of the Connecticut Education Association (CEA), the state’s largest teachers union, to Malloy’s policies, saying that “whenever anybody tries to break the mold, the CEA has to step in and say, ‘We can’t have this.’ “

Allie-Brennan countered that, “We should be investing more money in our public school system which doesn’t get as much attention as it should.”

On another topic, the state representatives said that he is “sure” that tolls will be installed in the state, since Lamont made a pledge in his platform to erect them on out-of-state trucks.

Allie-Brennan said that the metro Danbury area delegation is against the levy – noting the negative potential tolls could have on out-of-state customers coming to the Danbury Fair Mall.

He said the metro Danbury area delegation wants to upgrade the railroad system and eventually get commuter service extended to at least New Milford, which hasn’t had that accommodation since the early 1970s.

The state representative said he has been impressed with Lamont’s outreach to legislators and constituents since taking office.

“I like the way he is communicating with people,” Allie-Brennan said.

He said his experience in government has taught him that it is not how well you speak on the floor of the chamber or your intelligence that matters most, but how you develop a rapport with your colleagues.

Allie-Brennan said that, for example, he and Harding communicate regularly on proposals to boost economic development and other issues in Bethel, which they both represent.