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James Mol
In one Minute
Property taxes here are high because the state sets obligations, underfunds them, and leaves towns to cover the difference through the only tax they control.
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Schools are 62 percent of Suffield's budget, 73 percent of East Granby's and 54 percent of Windsor Locks'. The formula that decides what the state pays starts from a per-student amount set in 2013 and never changed. The 2025 special education law was funded at 16 cents on the dollar. The Excess Cost grant pays about 70 percent of what is owed.
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Relief does not require a new tax on working families. It requires the state to pay what it already promised, and to collect what is already owed.
Where every school dollar comes from
East Granby covers 84 cents of every school dollar from local property taxes. The federal share is small and formula-driven, so it is not where the leverage is. The state share is.
Source: Connecticut State Department of Education, expenditures by revenue source, 2023-24.
The full story
Connecticut is supposed to pay towns 45 cents on the dollar for most state property and 100 cents for correctional facilities, which matters in Suffield. In practice the legislature has overridden those rates every year since 2017 and listed each town's payment in the budget instead. Windsor Locks is paid at the top tier, Suffield in the middle, East Granby at the bottom. The airport payment to all three has not moved since 2015.
Connecticut's own revenue department recovers as much as $12 for every dollar it spends auditing high-income and corporate tax returns, and that capacity is not funded to match. The highest earners in this state still pay a lower effective rate than the families in this district, through carried interest and pass-through structures. A capital gains surcharge bill cleared the Finance Committee in 2026 and reached the Senate calendar without a vote.
Whatever you think of the size of state government, Connecticut appropriates about $2.46 billion a year for school aid and hundreds of millions more for towns, and it will be distributed. The question is not whether that money exists. It is whether our district gets its share or watches it go where the representatives who fought for it are from. This year's bipartisan budget added $172.9 million in school aid and $100 million in town aid. The education portion was written in a committee this district has not sat on in more than a decade.
What I will do in Hartford
Fund the state's existing obligations first: the school funding foundation, the airport and state property payments, the Excess Cost grant and the special education grant.
Index municipal aid so its value does not quietly erode every year, and codify a firm standard of no new unfunded mandates.
Fund revenue enforcement at the level its own return justifies, and pursue the carried interest and pass-through fixes in coordination with New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Serve on the Education Committee, where the largest line in every town budget is written.
What it costs the state, and how it can be paid for
I won’t promise a tax cut I can’t pay for. Here is what funding the state obligations costs, and where the money comes from.
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Updating the school formula. Senate Bill 7 would raise the per-student base from $11,525 to $15,500 over four years and index it after that. It cleared the Education and Appropriations committees in 2026 and reached the Senate calendar, but the session ended before it was called. It comes back in January. The state’s own estimate of the cost: $58 million in the first year, rising to $618 million a year by 2030. Part of that is already planned: the budget the legislature just passed requires a $152 million school aid increase in 2028.
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Fully funding special education. The state created a new special education grant in 2025 and designed it at about $190 million a year, then funded it at $30 million. Closing that gap is about $160 million a year.
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Indexing the Bradley payment. Restoring the host-town payment to its 2015 value is about $2 million a year, for four towns. It is the smallest item and the easiest.
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Together, at full phase-in (meaning in 2030, not next year), that is roughly $780 million a year, phased in over four years, against a state budget of about $27 billion. It is real money. It is not out of reach, and here is how it fits.
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Phase it in. Senate Bill 7 already does this: four steps, one a year. The first step costs $58 million, which fits inside the growth the budget already assumes.
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Use part of what the state is already setting aside. Connecticut ran a $2.5 billion surplus last year. Under the state’s budget rules, most of that goes to reserves and extra pension payments. The reserves are at their legal cap and the pension payments are ahead of schedule. Directing a share of future surpluses to promises already written into law does not mean repealing the rules; it means adjusting them so that money the state already has reaches the towns it was promised to.
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Collect what is already owed. The Department of Revenue Services recovers as much as $12 for every dollar it spends auditing high-income and corporate returns, and it is not staffed to pursue all of it.
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If neighboring states act, a fair share from carried interest. Connecticut has a bill to tax the carried-interest loophole at the state level. It only works if New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts move together, so I list it last and I do not count it as money in hand.
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What I will not do is promise you that your bill goes down by a fixed amount. The state keeps its promises; your town decides what to do with the money. My job is to make sure the money arrives.