Reform legislation, sponsored by Senator Phil Haines, was passed unanimously by the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee. The bill, S-1869, would bring fairness and transparency to the multi-million dollar, special municipal aid program also known as the distressed cities aid program.
The distressed cities program has been operating over the past five years without regulation, oversight or even the most basic accounting of the use of the taxpayers’ money. The distressed cities program’s budget has ballooned by more than $100 million in only six years. In 2002, the program cost the taxpayers $38 million. Today the program spends $153 million with no accounting of how the money is spent.
“For far too long, this program has been used for partisan political purposes,” Haines stated. “This common-sense reform measure that passed the Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee today will inject fairness and transparency into a state aid program that distributes over $140 million of the taxpayers’ money every year.”
Currently, only a handful of municipalities are notified of the program’s existence and are permitted to apply. Furthermore, there are no written standards to guide which towns will get money and how much they will receive. This bill will open the program to all towns on a fair playing field and finally establish standards for the award of funds which include prohibiting towns that created their own problems from getting taxpayer handouts.
“This bill will wean mismanaged towns off state aid and help ensure that those municipalities move toward fiscal independence,” Haines continued. “Middle-class taxpayers are sick and tired of digging into their pockets year after year to subsidize municipalities that refuse to adopt fiscally prudent measures. This bill will force those towns to be more fiscally accountable.”
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December 4, 2008
