Mixed Bag For The Lymes For Funding From The State

It isn’t usual when towns are getting less money, or in some rare cases more money, than they’ve gotten the previous year for leaders to be thankful. But considering what could have been, the budget passed by the House and Senate is good news for Lyme, but bad news for Old Lyme and East Lyme.

The $41.34 billion, two-year budget passed by a 126-23 vote in the House and a 33-3 vote in
the Senate this week means the following:

• Lyme will will receive $22,000 more in this fiscal year than it did last; in 2019 it will receive $10,000 more than it received last year.
• Old Lyme will receive $2,000 less this fiscal year; next year it will receive $367 less than it receives this year.
• East Lyme will receive $437,000 less this fiscal year; it will receive $672,000 less next fiscal year.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget planned to take much more away from the three towns – in some cases in the millions of dollars – in an effort to divert education funding to the poorer, bigger cities in the state.

The good news for the towns is the House and Senate votes passed by a substantial margin – meaning they are veto proof, as Malloy has said he will likely veto the budget if it doesn’t meet his goals.

Image via Shutterstock

— By Jack Kramer, Correspondent