The town of Woodstock with a population of just 8,000 is giving big healthcare stipends to town hall employees who opt out of the town’s healthcare plan. Employees, including First Selectman Alan Walker Jr. and tax collector Linda Bernardi, receive stipends of $1,163 per month while getting healthcare coverage through their spouses. On an annual basis, the stipends add up to $13,956 and costs taxpayers about $98,000.
Currently, lawmakers get the same benefits that state employees receive through contract negotiations. This gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. Instead, lawmakers should repeal this law and set their benefits separate from benefits for other state employees. Similarly, state employees in management receive the same benefits as those set by collective-bargaining agreements. Even the negotiators sitting across the table from the unions get the same benefits. Lawmakers should set the benefits of any state employees not covered by collective-bargaining agreements separately from unionized employees and by statute.
Nearly half of the taxes paid by Connecticut residents are property taxes, yet many local officials don’t know how spending in their town compares with spending in other towns. Today, the Yankee Institute released a study, Taxes at Home: A Comparison of Municipal Spending, that will help residents and local officials begin to make these comparisons.
Connecticut was already on the hook to offer $115 million of taxpayer money to Bridgewater Associates — the Westport hedge fund with $150 billion under management — if it would move from Westport to Stamford. The move may have fallen through, but Connecticut’s taxpayers are going to take it on the chin, nonetheless. In ...
Hartford is a city plagued with a variety of public policy problems — not least the misuse of city funds and other financial mismanagement. And it’s afflicted by a host of urban ills — including a poverty rate second only to Detroit (as of 2012) and the highest unsolved homicide rate (45%) of New England’s seven ...
Once again, the government class in Hartford is looking after its own. In the wake of the governor’s nomination of two new 66-year-old judges (along with some other nominees in their sixties), there was some well-deserved bipartisan outrage. That’s because, in under four years, those two judges would enter mandatory ...