Making New Canaan a Sanctuary Town

Connecticut is a leader in “sanctuary cities” that resist our immigration laws. Connecticut’s taxpayers need a sanctuary from the state’s burdensome mandates.

Sanctuary Cities

Sanctuary cities limit cooperation with the federal government’s enforcement of our immigration laws. A number of Connecticut cities have become sanctuary cities over the course of this past year. In addition, our state is one of two that has established a statewide sanctuary for illegal immigrants. Connecticut taxpayers need someplace to go, too. They need a sanctuary from endless tax hikes and expensive mandates.

Crisis

Today, Connecticut is in a budget crisis. New Canaan is about to be completely cut off from state funding. At the same time, we are burdened with massive costs from state mandates. Without such state mandates, New Canaan would be better able to come in under budget on projects such as the Waveny and high school fields. We need mandate relief if we are to protect both our schools and our taxpayers.

Options

There are essentially just four ways to deal with a state budget crisis 1) Lie. We can pretend it is not there and wait for the bond market to notice at which point a solution will be too late 2) Hike taxes again, but at some point the flood of fleeing taxpayers mean that this offers little additional revenue 3) Slash services, but this makes our state less attractive to newcomers or 4) Reform our town relationship with state mandates.

Mandates

Our state’s House Speaker is on the government union’s payroll and they get what they pay for. No state-level reform will happen before the 2018 elections. But we don’t have to wait. Today, our town’s resources are wasted on a corrupt and inefficient prevailing wage rate system. The difference between market prices and the prices resulting from binding arbitration is the difference between solvency and insolvency.

2017

Longer term, we can address these problems through the 2018 statewide election followed by new statutes that reform our state’s dominance by government unions. Shorter term, we have town elections in November and can elect new leaders with new ideas for greater fiscal discipline and greater home rule over our own town affairs. Where mandates are not clearly defined by statute, we can delay implementation.

Sanctuary Town

We can make New Canaan a sanctuary town for homeowners and taxpayers against the unrelenting onslaught of expensive state mandates. We must choose between low taxes, strong schools, and state mandates; we can afford one or two but not all three. If we want to defend strong schools and low taxes, we need to energetically push back against mandates through waivers from the worst state regulations.

Hope

The bad news is that we cannot afford both strong schools and low taxes while our taxpayer dollars get funneled into the pockets of the government unions. No state budget and no town budget can afford this combination, so we will have to prioritize. The good news is that help may be on the way from the US Supreme Court, which will consider Mark Janus’ case that it is unconstitutional to require him to pay union dues.   

Mark Janus, the man who could save Connecticut

Janus

If Janus wins, the entire funding mechanism behind our runaway mandates could collapse. AFSCME’s checks to our house speaker will bounce*. Instead of diverting our resources to their priorities, we can refocus on our own. Learn more about Mark Janus here. Despite severe problems, we could pull off a turnaround over the next few years, restoring our home values while strengthening our schools and holding the line on taxes.

*Actually, they prefer to pay in cash.