I’d like to begin by thanking the 100 volunteers for all their hard work and taking on a thankless task.
The Connecticut Citizens’ Assembly released its long-awaited final report on property tax reform. I believe this citizen-led attempt to fix Connecticut’s most notoriously broken system was taken on in good faith. It brought together a diverse group of residents in an attempt to bypass legislative gridlock, their charge was to solve the crushing property tax burden that drags down the majority of our municipalities, strains our homeowners, and starves our children of a decent education.
The report contains genuine breakthroughs —solutions that public education advocates and local leaders have championed for over a half a century. But beneath those noble intentions lies a deeply flawed financial structure that threatens to leave our most marginalized communities, and our public school classrooms, worse off than before.
If we are going to evaluate the Citizens’ Assembly recommendations honestly, we need to look at the full picture, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
The good: recognizing inflationary concerns, mandates and PILOTS
Let’s start where the report does well. For far too long, state government has passed the buck to local taxpayers through unfunded mandates and stagnant aid formulas. The Assembly rightly addresses several of these core structural inequities:
Tying Education Cost Sharing (ECS) to Inflation (Proposal B): For over 13 years, the ECS foundation amount was flat-funded at $11,525 per student, while educational costs have soared past $17,000. Unfortunately the Assembly didn’t touch upon this number but wisely suggested that the formula increase annually alongside the Employment Cost Index, this is a rising tide that will float most if not all school districts.
State-Funded Special Education (Proposal F): Municipalities currently carry the lions share $3.26 billion in annual K-12 SPED costs, approximately two-thirds through local property taxes. The proposal rightly states special education is a constitutional duty of the state, removing a massive, unpredictable burden from city operating budgets.
Mandate Protection and PILOT Reform (Proposals A, G, & H): Delaying state mandates by 12 months, while not perfect is a start, establishing independent mandate oversight, will be helpful but does not call for an outright ban on unfunded mandates.
Revaluating tax exemptions for massive non-profit institutions directly targets the structural drain on urban tax bases. Fiscally distressed host cities that shoulder massive, tax-exempt regional footprints are finally acknowledged. Unfortunately, I see no mention of fully funding the PILOT program in order to make municipalities whole.
The bad: Siphoning state revenue for the few over to the many
Where the report begins to unravel is in its regressive local revenue redistribution scheme, specifically Proposal E, which seeks to share restaurant and hotel tax revenues with host municipalities.
On its surface, letting towns keep local hospitality tax dollars sounds quire reasonable. In practice, it creates a massive “winner-take-all” system that starves the state as a whole.
Proposal E pulls $200 million annually out of the state’s General Fund at a time when state fiscal analysts project structural deficits beginning in FY 2028.
Tax dollars follow commercial and hotel density. Under this plan, just 10 municipalities—wealthy corporate hubs like Greenwich and Stamford, airport hosts like Windsor Locks, and casino towns —will capture the vast majority of the revenue. Meanwhile, over 50 smaller or less commercial towns will receive less than $50,000 a year.
Take Greenwich versus Bridgeport. Greenwich, with a luxury hotel footprint and high-end dining, stands to gain over $3.5 million annually. While Bridgeport with few hotels will be lucky to clear half that, even when major waterfront developments like Steelpointe Harbor fully materialize, the addition of a single extended-stay hotel barely moves the needle against Greenwich’s multi-million dollar windfall.
By carving out $200 million from the statewide pool to enrich a small handful of commercial hubs, Proposal E takes public dollars meant to benefit the entire state and hands them to the privileged few.
The ugly: the public education lock-out
The most concerning aspect of the Citizens’ Assembly report is not just where money is taken from, but how it is statutorily locked up.
Read the fine print of Proposal E carefully: the municipal share of meals and hotel tax revenues “would be dedicated to public safety and public works.”
Let that sink in. While our urban priority school districts face multi-million dollar structural deficits, forcing local boards of education to cut reading specialists, eliminate librarians, art programs, and support staff —the report would explicitly forbid a single cent of this new $200 million revenue stream from going toward public education.
This creates a perverse dynamic inside city halls across Connecticut:
City departments receive dedicated new revenue for paving roads and funding police departments, while local boards of education remain trapped relying on stagnant property tax bases. City councils, pointing to the new state tax relief for municipal services, will face immense political pressure to flat fund education or have to raise revenue elsewhere.
Add to this Proposal J (Interstate Tolls), which generates an estimated $950 million annually but statutorily directs those dollars to transportation infrastructure and motor vehicle tax offsets, and a disturbing pattern emerges: Roads, bridges, and police departments receive guaranteed, dedicated funding streams, while public school classrooms are left to fight for scraps under state spending caps.
Where do we go from here?
The Citizens’ Assembly proved that Connecticut hungers for change. Their calls to fully fund special education, index school aid to inflation, and put the brakes on unfunded mandates, echo the historic battle cries of advocates. These proposals deserve full advocacy efforts and support.
However, lawmakers cannot accept this report blindly. Any regressive tax reform package that drains $200 million from the General Fund to enrich ten commercial hubs, while barring public schools from accessing those funds, is not equity; it is a downward redistribution of wealth that leaves our children behind.
If Connecticut is serious about fixing its property tax crisis, it must put public education at the center of the equation. We must demand that new revenue streams support educational equity rather than widening the racial funding gap which stands at $1.25 billion and growing.
The choices we make in the upcoming legislative session will make or break the current and future generations of children. It is time to fix the bad, throw out the ugly, and build a system that works for every student and taxpayer in our state.
Joseph Sokolovic is Vice Chair of the Bridgeport Board of Education. The opinions expressed here are his alone.