Recommendations To Create A Framework For Property Tax Reform

The December 2022 updated report Property Tax Reform: If Not Now, When? offers the following as achievable change to the current property tax system:

1. Fix structural vertical and horizontal inequity.

Put in place targeted property tax relief, with refundable property tax credits and/or circuit breakers to make the property tax more progressive in terms of overall tax burden.

2. Close the Needs-Capacity Gap for Municipalities

Phase in, with a hold-harmless provision, a restructuring of municipal state-aide and provide additional new aid consistent with the 2015 recommendations from the New England Public Policy Center to utilize state-aide as a primary means to address fiscal disparities across communities and ensure that all localities have the resources needed to provide high-quality public services.

3. Close the Cost-Capacity Gap for education.

a. Correct the current deficiencies in the Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) formula to resolve the cost-capacity gap. The 2021 New England Public Policy Center study on the cost-capacity gap suggests ways to correct the current deficiencies in ECS. We suggest that policymakers examine this report and use its findings and suggestions to further modify aid for education.

b. Fully fund special education. Such a change would provide immediate and significant local tax relief and would remove one of the largest unknown costs from each school district’s budget.

More importantly, it would render local discussion of the cost of Special Education moot and place the focus where it belongs -- on the needs of special education students.

c. Provide increased funding to ensure the adequacy of K-12 education. Funding should be provided in an adequate and equitable manner that more closely reflects the real costs of educating students should include appropriate weightings for students with disabilities, English language learners and students from families living in poverty.

d. Enable towns and cities to be more collaborative in creating efficiencies, reducing costs and enhancing educational options for their students by providing school districts with a wider array of governance options that would successfully address the typical challenges that cause towns and districts to back away from or not consider regionalization and/or collaboration.

4. Commit to regional and collaborative solutions for the delivery and coordination of state and local services.

a. The nine regional councils of governments and the six regional education service centers are the foundation for regional and shared services. They must be harnessed for the delivery of services by both the state and its cities and towns.

b. Review and modify statutes that are an impediment to the creation of regional, cooperative and inventive regional and shared approaches for the delivery of educational services, including special education.

c. Connecticut’s economic development approach must be changed to one where recruitment and expansion are done on a shared and/or regional basis with consideration of both costs and revenues as well as regional impact, rather than the current town specific approach.

5. Provide policymakers with up-to-date facts and independent non-partisan analyses.

a. Reinstitute the legislature’s Program, Review and Investigations Committee.

b. Provide public funding for a nonpartisan, independent public policy research center.