The state budget signed into law Tuesday increases state funding for cities and towns by $23.5 million in the 2015-16 fiscal year, which begins today.

Middletown will see its funding increase most with an additional $3.9 million; eight other communities will get a more than $1 million boost in state aid. Several municipalities will get a small cut in state aid, though state funding for Hartford is reduced by $1.7 million and New Haven by $612,000, the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis reports.

Overall, Connecticut’s cities and towns will receive $2.5 billion next year from the state, a major source of revenue that affects property-tax rates and services provided in many cities and towns. Read more about the changes in municipal aid here.

The primary sources of state aid to towns are:

  • PILOT grants: There are two kinds of grants to reimburse towns for some lost tax revenue from tax-exempt property, one for state property and the other for property owned by non-profits, such as hospitals and colleges. PILOT is an acronym for Payment in Lieu of Taxes.
  • Pequot Grants: The state shares with municipalities a portion of the revenue it receives from slot machines at the tribal casinos.
  • School grants: The state helps towns pay for school transportation and adult education.
  • Education Cost Sharing: This is the principal grant the state provides to help towns run their school systems. It is by far the largest grant towns receive, accounting for $2.06 billion of the $2.52 billion in local aid.
  • Town Aid Road: This grant helps pay for maintenance and snow removal on local roads.
  • Local Capital Improvement Program (LOCIP): This helps towns pay for capital improvements, such as sidewalks and bridges.
  • Municipal Projects: This is a catch-all category for local construction projects.

Hover over your town to see how much more or less your town is set to receive in fiscal 2016.

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Jacqueline Rabe Thomas

jrabe@ctmirror.org

Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.

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Andrew Ba Tran

abtran@ctmirror.org

Andrew is a former data editor at TrendCT.org and The Connecticut Mirror. He taught data visualization at Central Connecticut State University as well intro to data journalism at Wesleyan University as a Koeppel Fellow. He was a founding producer of The Boston Globe's Data Desk where he used a variety of methods to visualize or tell stories with data. Andrew also was an online producer at The Virginian-Pilot and a staff writer at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He’s a Metpro Fellow, a Chips Quinn Scholar, and a graduate of the University of Texas.

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