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Article ReminderNews: "Towns put heads together in Vernon
BY STEVE SMITH Staff Writer
Vernon Mayor Jason McCoy chaired a round table discussion last week, with leaders of several Tolland County towns, to discuss ways to deal with difficult issues, including unfunded mandates, labor negotiations, health insurance costs, and declining state revenues."


Vernon Mayor Jason McCoy chaired a round table discussion last week, with leaders of several Tolland County towns, to discuss ways to deal with difficult issues, including unfunded mandates, labor negotiations, health insurance costs, and declining state revenues.

Click the thumbnails above to see the full size pictures.State Sen. Tony Guglielmo was on hand, to provide insight into the state end of the issues. Also present was attorney Edward O’Connell , who represents Vernon in its labor negotiations.
McCoy said one way he has dealt with unfunded mandates is to combine attrition with technology, in the form of “electronic government.”
“You have to start looking at these things to help out your town,” McCoy said, adding that Vernon uses software to track complaints and response time, and to store documents.
McCoy said Vernon is looking into more ways that small investments in software can perform tasks, such as issuing building permits.
“Basically, it’s centralizing all of your data, so you can move things faster,” he said.
Health insurance costs went up almost across the board, and negotiating with the insurance companies has been difficult, but perhaps unecessarily so.
Somers First Selectman Lisa Pellegrini said one issue is employees in her town have a total of 14 plans, and she hopes to push toward consolidation .
“The school [system] has 12 different plans,” she said. “One teacher has their own plan. They’re so similar, so you just have to get it back together.”
Sick days and overtime of municipal employees, as they affect pensions in some towns, are things that are causing major budget headaches, since unused sick time and pension increases are not usually accounted for in the budget processes .
McCoy and others said they are under the impression that few taxpayers are aware of how these things drive up town costs.
He said that studies have shown the average employee uses 2.1 sick days in 5 years. Under current accounting practices , employees are allowed to accrue their sick time over years, and then receive large payouts upon retirement.
“This is also pushing up pensions in the end,” McCoy said. “Nobody’s aware of sick days. I thought sick days were a nice thing to have for people. I didn’t realize it was something you get when you retire – half a year’s salary all at once and you drive up your pension by 50 percent.”
Columbia First Selectman said the state has mandated that towns cannot give their Boards of Education a budget that is less than the previous year’s .
“We cut the Board of Ed. budget,” she said. “We actually cut it by about $110,000... Next, we were informed by the state ‘you can’t do that.’ We can’t go below what you’ve given them in the past. So now we’re asked to give them back that $110,000, which makes no financial sense.”
There is a bill on the table that credits school systems for having fewer students , she said, but it’s only about 20 percent of the difference.
The answers to these problems, it seems, is to change the rules.
“Everybody has to rethink the model ,” said Andover First Selectman Robert Burbank. “It’s not about trying to hurt people. You have to get employees on board. You have to take a hard look at some issues.”
O’Donnell said the unions are willing to discuss difficult issues, but many towns are afraid of going to binding arbitration .
“The more you [towns] are prepared to, the more union reps will negotiate more seriously with you,” he said.
State-level reform was also called for. “It’s probably the time for the state to say: ‘we’re just going to fight over every one of these things,” McCoy said,
Guglielmo said the state has at least $51 billion in unfunded and under-funded liabilities, largely due to the pensions over the next several years. “The truth is that we [the state legislature ] haven’t done nearly the job that you have on the local level,” he said, adding that things, indeed, must change. Guglielmo said towns and residents should keep their representatives in Hartford in check. “Hold us accountable,” he said. Contact Steve Smith at