
I wonder what they’re up to?
Hartford wants to reexamine how hospitals are (not) taxed, but that’s just the opening salvo.
HARTFORD — Lawmakers on Tuesday approved a variety of bills aimed at eventually changing the way Connecticut helps fund local governments.
While the legislative Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee voted for a systemic study of municipal finance, the Planning and Development Committee pushed through a bill that would entirely revamp the way cities get payments for hosting tax-exempt universities and hospitals.
Because he’s an amiable dunce, Greenwich’s Scott Frantz sees nothing ominous with what’s going on:
“It has not been thought about, as far as I know, for a decade or longer,” said Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, ranking member of the committee. “This will be a huge and valuable building tool toward getting to that better place where we fully understand what’s working for the state of Connecticut and what is not. And we have a chance to make an optimal tax-revenue structure for the state.”
Let me spell it out for you, Scott – better yet, let a Democrat do it for me:
Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, a member of both committees, said the bills emerging will fuel many important discussions on the state’s future and the possibility of ending the dependence on local property taxes that make for a high cost of living in lower-income cities like Bridgeport and New Haven.
It’s all as one with last session’s creation of regional governing bodies, which is to say, taking more from Greenwich and passing the monies seized onto friends of Dannel. Scottie will pull out what’s left of his hair in consternation when he discovers what his colleagues are up to but that will be five or ten years from now, when it’s far too late to do anything.
Scott’s a wonderful, generous guy, but he’s clearly incapable of swimming with the sharks. That speaks well of him as a person, but not so such as our representative in Hartford.