Ricks, Breen Photos
Clockwise from top: Harp, Nemerson, Looney.
According to one new calculation, the state is filling New Haven’s coffers to the brim with cash.
According to another calculation, the state is starving New Haven of cash, leading the city to consider raising taxes 11 percent.
Both those calculations add up. It’s the assumptions that change the answer — and offer differing perspectives on why the city is wrestling with painful new fiscal choices. Whom to blame. And how to fix it.
The first calculation came from New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney. Looney serves as president pro tem of the State Senate. That means he as much as any other legislator can be blamed or credited for how well the city fares at the Capitol.
State Senate President’s Office
Looney’s office last week released a spreadsheet that he said showed that New Haven’s annual total state aid rose from $194 million in 2011 to $226 million in 2018 — a time when Connecticut otherwise kept cutting other parts of its budget, including eliminating 7,000 government jobs.
He also said New Haven has fared better than other cities during that time: It receives 9.4 percent of all municipal aid (including education and PILOT and other grants) this fiscal year compared to 8.9 percent in 2011, its share of total municipal aid rising from 13.6 percent to 16.8 percent.
Looney added that the state has sent New Haven $246 million in bond money for school construction since 2011 and another $343 million in bonding for other construction. (Click here to see his chart listings all the projects.)
Looney released that chart in response to an announcement by Mayor Toni Harp, on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program, that she had instructed her legal team to explore suing the state for shortchanging the city.
She noted that the state prevents New Haven from levying taxes on 54 percent of its real estate — yet the state comes nowhere close to the 77 percent reimbursement of that lost revenue promised under the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program. The reimbursement level hovers closer to 40 percent.
Harp blamed declining state aid for her decision to seek approval for an 11 percent tax increase in the city budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Needless to say, Looney’s math didn’t earn a high grade in City Hall.
Harp’s Development Administration went to work breaking down the line items Looney claimed as “municipal aid.” Much of it, Harp and Development Administrator Matthew Nemerson concluded, was, in fact, state aid: $1.92 million for a new elevator at the state courthouse on Elm Street, for instance. Another $1.2 million for upgrades at the Connecticut Tennis Center, home of the annual state-owned tennis tournament. Southern Connecticut State University library additions and renovations worth $2.5 million. A $3 million “continued design” for the Route 15 West Rock Tunnel. Tweed-New Haven Airport improvements worth $4.25 million. Connecticut Mental Health Center chiller plant upgrades worth $2.1 million.
Harp and Nemerson said they were particularly outraged to see Looney’s list include $80 million for expanding New Haven’s rail yard — for purposes in opposition to plans New Haven government has been advocating for instead.
Once Nemerson’s staff completed a color-coded markup of Looney’s chart — with an orange column for “Board of Education/Charter” aid, a yellowish column for regional affordable housing, a blue column for “regional organizations, a green state projects” column— the total amount of state bonding money for direct municipal aid or “local development” in New Haven over the past six years shrank from $343 million to $52 million.
See the color-coded markup in the screenshots at the bottom of this article.
Doing The Region’s Work
At first glance, the separating out of some, but not other, costs as “counting” as municipal aid can seem inconsistent.
For instance: $4 million worth of Shubert theater improvements count toward the city aid category. The tennis improvements don’t. Money to help renovate the Dwight Gardens cooperative — a top priority of the Harp administration’s Livable City Initiative — do not count, according to the list. But a $100,000 grant for plans to redevelop the subsidized Beechwood Gardens complex does.
A $5 million grant for the development of a new mixed-income housing development in the Hill by Randy Salvatore does count as direct city help; $2 million in remediation of a contaminated former state bus garage on James Street, a top development priority for the site (for the DISTRICT tech project) does not. A 2011 $3.5 million grant to enable (now largely departed) Higher One to rebuild a Science Park factory building does make the list.
And numerous grants for nonprofit affordable housing development and social services in the city all are excluded from the city aid category,
That’s because New Haven is providing those services for the region, Nemerson said in an interview.
“When we’re the only city willing to build affordable housing and we in many cases offer tax abatements for that affordable housing — meaning New Haveners are actually supporting the regions exclusivity zoning — you can’t [put that] on our bar tab. If we get $5 million for affordable housing for Rockview, that should be credited to COG (Council of Governments), the region. That makes Branford, Woodbridge, have exclusionary zoning and not have affordable housing in their community.
“We should get 100 percent PILOT for affordable housing. … We should not only have affordable housing — which we’re happy to provide because it makes a more diverse community — but we should have 100 percent” reimbursement.
Similarly, social services like Clifford Beers may be headquartered here but serve the whole region and in some cases do the state government’s work, Nemerson argued.
The Shubert money belongs in the city aid category because other communities would like to have theaters, too, he said; New Haven’s not taking on a regional burden by hosting that nontaxable entity.
As for the old bus garage at the new DISTRICT, the state polluted it. The state as a matter of policy dumped oil in the ground. When we cut our deal with the state to buy property, “we said, ‘Yes we would like that building. But we will not pay for remediating the Department of Transportation’s pollution.”
Nemerson acknowledged that there may be a few “mistakes” in assigning individual grants to various columns on the spreadsheet. But he said the bigger point is that fairness dictates that if the state prevents the city from taxing so much of its property, it should deliver promised genuine aid in return.
He noted that PILOT payments have failed to rise even as Yale has added more than a half-billion dollars worth of new nontaxable property with two new residential colleges and a new home for its School of Management.
Looney: Enough
Asked about the city’s annotation of his staff’s spreadsheet, Marty Looney argued that “any fair-minded person would think New Haven has done well” with state aid during a period when Connecticut’s government has otherwise been steadily slashed.
“The net figure of aid to New Haven is substantially larger than what they’re claiming,” Looney said. The school construction program alone — under which the state has contributed $1.2 billion over the past two decades — dwarfs similar aid given to other communities, he said.
That said, Looney called a time-out on the back-and-forth over the exact figure of urban aid.
“I’m not interested in engaging further with this,” he said. “I made my point. I think it’s a good point. The city is trying to deflect responsibility for a tax increase. I understand that.”
Mayor Harp, during her most recent WNHH FM “Mayor Monday” appearance this week, said, of course, the city welcomes state aid to nonprofits, but argued that isn’t the same as making the city whole for lost tax revenues. “Allow our administration and our Board of Alders to set the agenda for those dollars. If it goes to a nonprofit — we like for the dollars to go with that.”
She said the city deserves to have the same right as the suburbs to tax its property or receive comparable reimbursement so “we can have the same number of policemen, firemen, people who work in the public works department” without having to raise taxes. She said she’s interested in pursuing the PILOT lawsuit to force the state to recognize an obligation it has shirked.
