We have stimulus

It looks like we have stimulus from the Federal government. At least, something that looks like it. Pending more details, some pointers to have in mind:

1. States and cities are getting less that it was initially aproved by the House. Let´s hope that Rell´s budget estimates were not too full of wishfull windfall thinking.
2. The incentives for the purchase of cars and housing are (mostly) gone. Both good news. Neither were too good as stimulus, and both were potentially terrible in regards of smart growth.
   
3. Only the US Congress is able to have one plan costing $820 billion, another $840 billion, and reach a compromise that is bellow both figures, $789 billion.
4. No details on how the transportation money will go. Fingers crossed for more rail.

Bonus Obama clip: "The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over." We have a smart growth president.

Rell's Budget: Heidi's take

I quote Heidi Green's take on the proposed budget:

Governor M. Jodi Rell presented her proposed budget earlier this week. She said the budget makes for a leaner more efficient government that would position the state to soar when the economy recovers.

Connecticut’s future prosperity and competitiveness hinges on developing robust downtowns and urban centers; fostering desirable communities where millennials can start their careers, Gen X-ers can start their families, and baby boomers can transition to the challenges of aging within walking distance of shopping, recreation, education opportunities and easy access to transit. That behooves the state to play a significant role in reducing cities and towns’ reliance on the property tax to pay for government services; improve regional cooperation to realize efficiencies in government service delivery and coordinate land use & economic development at a sustainable scale; and invest strategically in assets that guarantee a positive long-run return to the state’s economy, environment and society – investments in transit, transit oriented development, brownfield revitalization, affordable housing, and priority property preservation.
Does the Governor’s proposed budget advance smart growth in the next biennium? Not so much.

The Governor proposes a one-year $40 million grant program that encourages towns to provide services like trash collection, road maintenance, animal control, etc. regionally.

At the same time, the budget:
• reduces bonding to cities and towns,
• eliminates planning grants to municipalities,
• reduces previous bond authorizations for planning by half,
• eliminates state-sponsored education for land use commissioners,
• eliminates funding for regional planning organizations,
• eliminates the regional incentive grant program,
• zeros the regional performance grant,
• cuts Payments in Lieu of Taxes for colleges and hospitals and PILOT for state-owned property in all of our major cities except Hartford.

For smart growth advocates, other worrisome items in the budget include a proposal to switch all Department of Environmental Protection special funds to the General Fund – this includes the emergency spill response program and underground storage tank cleanup. The budget narrative says this would open the funds to the transparency of the appropriations process. 1000 FRIENDS vociferously supports greater transparency and accountability in government but clearly there’s more going on here than openness.

DEP loses its dedicated funds and its lines in the Governor’s budget reflect a 7.44 percent cut in the biennium with $12 million lost in 09/10 only $7.1 million of which would be recovered in 10/11.

The Governor proposes big changes to the Department of Economic and Community Development. It will absorb the Office of Workforce Competitiveness and the Commission on Culture and Tourism. DECD is currently responsible for a number of growth and development programs. They include:
• brownfield remediation and redevelopment,
• affordable housing,
• Main Street development, and
• urban redevelopment.
• The Commission on Culture and Tourism is responsible for historic preservation – a key concern when redeveloping older neighborhoods.

DECD takes on significantly more responsibility with the Governor’s proposed budget, but it loses $10.3 million in 09/10 and another $4 million in 10/11. And the CCT loses all $33 million of its funds.

Transportation fares little better. The Transportation Strategy Board is eliminated and the Special Transportation Fund receives an anemic four percent infusion.

The Governor includes $1.9 billion in federal stimulus dollars in her budget. Given this week’s tussling in the U.S. Senate, this amount seems optimistic. The current deficit projected by the Office of Fiscal Analysis is close to $3 billion deeper than the Governor’s budget reflects. Obviously, the Connecticut General Assembly will have to consider both cuts and revenue enhancements in the coming weeks.

Smart growth advocates need to help them keep the endgame in sight as they do. If they chose well, we can grow smart and sustainably. We can weather the recession and come out stronger. If not, we’ll see further urban disinvestment, lose even more land, be stuck in our cars in traffic and no one will relocate their homes or businesses here because they won’t be able to afford our housing!

The Rell Budget

Governor Rell just unveiled her budget proposal (full text here, greatest hits here), and to tell the truth, we are still going through it. Heidi will probably give some pointers on the good, the bad and the ugly on it; for know, it seems that I was mistaken and there are no cuts (at least no big ones) on help for cities and education funding. A good thing. In addition, Rell has talked quite a bit on cooperation between towns, positive if well implemented; in that I am a bit less confident.

The amount of reorganizing is pretty substantial on a first look, with a pretty indiscriminate trimming of the miriad of commissions that populate the state. In terms of services, higher education got big cuts, and low income people will be asked to pay more for health care.

Reaction by legislators has been mixed; Jonathan Pelto really, really doesn´t like it, though, and my Left Nutmegg calls it "awful".

Aside of all that, one random question: what´s up with the legislature obsession with a bottle bill? I know it is important, but it is really that important? Can anyone explain?

The Governor's Speech

The governor was on TV today, telling everyone how resilient we people of Connecticut are and how the new budget to be formally introduced in Wednesday will be pretty painful. The speech was short and consequently short on details, but had three important points to pay attention to.

First, the budget will have cuts. Big cuts, for the tone of what the Governor said. That's not a surprise, considering the very dismal situation of the state budget. It is important to point out, however, that despite the usual talk about efficiency and making government smaller because "we can't afford what we have" Connecticut has a pretty average public sector. Actually considering how wealthy the state is, the problem might be that we have a regular-size state budget but a pretty dismal appetite to tax according to it.

Which brings us to the second point, the no new taxes part. Raising taxes across the board during a recession it is indeed a fairly bad idea; the problem in Connecticut, however, is that a strong cuts-only, no new taxes position could indeed mean new taxes somewhere else. This is speculation on my part, but if the state cuts the money for education or PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes; the state's way to compensate towns that host non-profits) this would just shift the burden to local governments.

This would comply with the no increase in taxes on the state side, but would just put a lot of pressure on cities and towns to either raise property taxes or cut budgets even more harshly. We already pointed out that the property tax system is actually pretty terrible; anything that increases the state reliance on this tax is a bad idea. We will get back to it when the full budget is unveiled, just to see if this is actually going to be on the proposal.

Third, we at 1000 Friends have some good, detailed proposals to get the state out of this crisis stronger and better prepared to the challenges of tomorrow, so let me insert a shameless plug to our legislative agenda. The state should try to focus its priorities on growing smart, not just on seeing what can go to the chopping block in cuts that always hurt the same people.

Why the Smart Growth Legislative Package is important

Heidi and CT Smart Growth have written all the important details regarding the content of the Smart Growth Working Group legislative package; let me add a couple of things to that list.

Attending the January 26^th event at 10 at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford is important. We need to have as many voices as possible supporting this agenda to get it moving, specially with the present economic situation.

Why smart growth reform is important now? For starters, one of the main reasons that the state and local budgets are in such a terrible shape is because we have not been growing smart. Connecticut is an expensive state, made more expensive by bad planning that restrict the available housing stock. We either have big, expensive houses paying high property taxes in suburbs or cheap, generally low quality housing in the city cores paying even higher property taxes.

That does not help to attract jobs. Neither do the very high transportation costs, outdated infrastructure, high energy prices, the congestion, the very inefficient tax system, or the tendency to sprawl instead of making good use of what we already have in place.

The smart growth agenda is a comprehensive plan to address many of this issues directly or indirectly. It is a plan that includes not only short term savings but long term reforms. Connecticut needs to make big changes if we are too avoid this endless cycle of budget panics that seems to gripe the state every time that the economy goes South.

We will keep track of where each piece of legislation is once the package starts making its way through the legislature. Suscribe to our blog for updates!