CT legislature poised to make early budget pledge to help cities and towns ctmirror.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ctmirror.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Image
Melissa McCaw
But the providers of that service are also watching with concern as Connecticut’s state government ramps up efforts to seek greater control over their plans, policies and checkbooks.
“It s critically clear in the 21st century the importance of having access to reliable internet,” state Budget Chief Melissa McCaw said during a recent briefing on the proposed state budget. “This is also about economic opportunity to the extent to which more remote work is done. There are sectors of our population that don t have access to those types of jobs without closing the broadband divide.”
Central to the issue is the state’s persistent digital divide, the difficulty that a portion of the community has in getting online. Gov. Ned Lamont’s office estimates that 23% of Connecticut’s population can’t access reliable internet, either because they lack service, skills or the right devices. Lamont’s focus for 2021 is building out the broadband infrastructure.
From left, Connecticut Conference of Municipalities Executive Director Joe DeLong, Council of Small Towns Executive Director Betsy Gara, and former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. (CTMirror.org)
For some municipal leaders, the state legislature’s 2015 promise to send hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue to cities and towns is one of the worst examples of fiscal bait-and-switch in Connecticut politics.
And for the Democratic state legislators who won re-election after making that pledge the promise is something they’d like to forget.
That’s because the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account, the mechanism through which municipalities would receive a portion of the state sales tax, also has become a recurring pain in the legislature’s side.
For some municipal leaders, the state legislature’s 2015 promise to send hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue to cities and towns is one of the worst examples of fiscal bait-and-switch in Connecticut politics.
And for the Democratic state legislators who won re-election after making that pledge the promise is something they’d like to forget.
That’s because the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account, the mechanism through which municipalities would receive a portion of the state sales tax, also become a recurring pain in the legislature’s side.
6 years later, the pledge to share sales tax receipts with CT towns is still unfulfilled
Keith M. Phaneuf, CTMirror.org
FacebookTwitterEmail
Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalitiesfile photo
For some municipal leaders, the state legislature’s 2015 promise to send hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenue to cities and towns is one of the worst examples of fiscal bait-and-switch in Connecticut politics.
And for the Democratic state legislators who won re-election after making that pledge the promise is something they’d like to forget.
That’s because the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account, the mechanism through which municipalities would receive a portion of the state sales tax, also become a recurring pain in the legislature’s side.