News Flash

The proposed changes at the State level to education funding will impact Trumbull. These proposed changes include a reduction of Education Cost Sharing (ECS) revenue of $655,538 and a new expense of $510,870 for the town’s allocation of the Teachers’ Retirement System cost. Adding both the loss of the ECS funding and the expense of the Teachers’ Retirement System amounts to a $1.2 million dollar loss for Trumbull.

The Board of Education requested an increase of $4,455,245 or 4.3% for the 2019-2020 budget year. My budget reduces that increase to $2,070,735, an increase of 2% over last year. As a matter of fiscal prudence, the budget I presented accounts for the full impact of the State proposed changes as stated above. On April 8, 2019, the Board of Finance accepted my proposed increase to the Board of Education budget.

You can see in the chart below that we continue to invest in our education system at a rate comparable to--and in fact better than--some years in the recent past. My two-year aggregate increase in school-system funding is 5.1%, compared to the last two years of the previous administration, when the funding increase to the schools equaled 3.2%.                                                   

I have written to the administration in Hartford and spoken to key leaders asking them to review these proposed changes to our State funding as I believe Trumbull’s allocation is disproportionate. Our legislators in Hartford, both in the Senate and the House, must work diligently with me to lessen the negative impact on Trumbull and I am confident they will do their best.

We all need to work together to achieve the result we desire. I am again requesting that our residents also contact the Governor, the Lt. Governor, and the members of Trumbull’s delegation, in both the House and Senate, to urge them to reject the proposed change to our ECS Funding and the new Teachers’ Retirement System expense. Shifting costs or suddenly cutting long-established funding sources is detrimental to our community.

If these State funding changes are included in the final budget adopted by the State legislature in June of this year, we can expect an additional $1.2 million funding decrease in the 2020-2021 budget and again in the 2021-2022 budget.  This means we could see a cumulative reduction in our ECS funding of almost $2 million and an increase in the Teacher’s Retirement System expense of over $1.5 million by the year 2022.

Below is the contact information for Trumbull's State Delegation and some of our State elected officials.

Trumbull’s State Delegation

Representative Ben McGorty (122^nd)
Legislative Office Building
Rm 4200
300 Capital Ave.
Hartford, CT  06106
860-240-8700
800-842-1423
Ben.McGorty@housegop.ct.gov

Representative David Rutigliano (123^rd)
Legislative Office Building
Rm 4200
300 Capital Ave.
Hartford, CT  06106
860-240-8700
800-842-1423
David.Rutigliano@housegop.ct.gov

Representative Laura Devlin (134^th)
Legislative Office Building
Rm 4200
300 Capital Ave.
Hartford, CT  06106
860-240-8700
800-842-1423
Laura.Devlin@housegop.ct.gov

Senator Marilyn Moore (22^nd)
Legislative Office Building
Rm 3300
300 Capital Ave.
Hartford, CT  06106
860-240-8600
800-842-1420
Marilyn.moore@cga.ct.gov

State Elected Officials

Governor Ned Lamont
Office of the Governor
State Capitol
210 Capitol Ave.
Hartford, CT  06106
860-566-4840
governor.lamont@ct.gov

Lt. Governor Susan Bysiewicz
State Capitol
210 Capitol Ave.  Room 304
Hartford, CT  06106
860-524-7384
ltgovernor.bysiewicz@ct.gov