Westport's State Reps Reveal Tax Hike Impact

With a series of spending cuts and tax hikes making its way through the Connecticut legislature, Westport’s two state representatives explained – warts and all – what it might mean for their constituents.

“There’s a little bit of a tax increase everywhere, and if we were just paying a little more sales tax that’d be one thing,” said state Rep. Kim Fawcett, D-133, who represents Fairfield and Westport’s Green Farm’s area. “Because there’s so many layers of [the proposed taxes] people are going to feel the impact multiple times a day instead of one time a year or one time a month.”

Some of the ways Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed making money is by reducing the property tax credit from $500 to $300, implementing taxes on a variety of goods and services, such as yoga classes and salons, among other measures.

Jonathan Steinberg, D-136, said that Westport as a municipality might not be severely impacted since it already receives a limited amount of money from the state. The people, however, could be bearing the brunt of the upcoming budget.

“Some of the luxury taxes, some of the sales taxes and some of the regressive taxes – like the gasoline tax – affects everybody.,” Steinberg said. “That perhaps will be the bigger story rather than the [municipality].”

On Friday afternoon, Fawcett and Steinberg talked about the budget at Starbucks on 925 Post Road East. The press outnumbered the constituents as the two politicians spoke about their hopes and concerns for the biennial budget. The budget will leave committee and enter the General Assembly next week. Jonathan Steinbberg, D-136, and Fawcett think it could be voted on by early May, but that might be delayed.

The problem, according to both state representatives, is that a key component of the budget is missing. Gov. Malloy demanded that unionized state employees give back $1 billion or he’ll start cutting their departments. Progress on the concessions is unknown.

“We’ve heard different things via the rumor mill that [Gov. Malloy is] having greater or lesser success in his conversations with [unions],” said Steinberg. “They’ve offered up some efficiencies and some other savings, but no one believes it’s going to amount to the full billion dollars.”

Perhaps an indication of how the talks are progressing, Gov. Malloy warned that if the unions don’t give money back, he’ll have to cut aid to municipalities as plan B. Fawcett said the governor is very sensitive about cutting aid to municipalities because of his background as the former mayor of Stamford.

“The importance of not cutting money to municipalities is about property taxes,” Fawcett said. “If we cut money to the municipalities, they have no choice to cut services or raise your property taxes.”

Fawcett said there are a number of places where savings can be achieved – such as the $3.5 million spent to operate rest areas on highways and an addition million dollars spent to operate the 2-1-1 state information line.

Steinberg said that while cuts like this aren’t a lot on their own, they can mean big savings for taxpayers.

“It may not be hundreds of millions of dollars, but if we’re doing this on a regular basis, it all adds up program by program to some serious money,” Steinberg said.