Durham And Middlefield Face Possibility Of Paying All Costs For Resident State Trooper

Bethany, Durham and Middlefield residents may be forced to pick up the entire cost of having resident state troopers patrol their towns if Gov. Dannel P. Malloy gets his way with his two-year, $41.5 billion budget proposal.

Currently the state foots the bill for only 15 percent of the cost of troopers. But Malloy wants the towns that use troopers to pay 100 percent of the cost – which he estimates would save the state, which is facing a $1.5 billion budget deficit, $1.5 million annually.

Malloy is also proposing charging the town $750 for every constable in town supervised by a resident state trooper, which would put another $200,000 annually in the state coffers.

“This is very troubling, especially as towns try to grapple with other budget cuts,” Betsy Gara, executive director of the Council of Small Towns, said. “The percentage of costs towns that use the program has continually risen over the past few years,” Gara said.

In the last budget cycle, the towns' share of the resident state trooper costs went from 70 percent to its current 85 percent cost.

The program, which operates in 54 communities, allows a state trooper to serve as the top law-enforcement official in a town and supervise local officers. When it was launched in 1947, the state paid for the full cost of the program.

The total number of troopers assigned to towns is 97.

Gara noted that the towns also pay 100 percent of any overtime costs and a portion of fringe benefits directly associated with overtime costs.

Image via Shutterstock

— By Jack Kramer, Correspondent

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