CT Mirror34%
Citizens’ group seeks to force gubernatorial debate on property tax 19%
By Keith M. Phaneuf0%
7/16/2026, 9:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Negativity Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 15.5% saturation with 263 hits. Analysis detected 2,088 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,699 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.7% and a BS Rank of 19% (13,502 of 16,550 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.60% of the article peer group.
Joe DeLong gives a talk to call upon the State Legislature to pass comprehensive land use reform during the special session on Tuesday, July 14 at the Connecticut State Capitol.
Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, in 2020.
The property tax has long been Connecticut’s Gordian knot, a seemingly intractable problem that overburdens middle- and low-income households, stymies business growth and creates great K-12 education disparities between cities and suburbs.
Municipal leaders don’t expect the new Citizens’ Assembly will eradicate a system that has its roots in colonial times and has plagued governors and legislators for decades.
But they do hope this fresh look at an old problem will force Connecticut’s gubernatorial contenders this fall to confront an issue that candidates traditionally have ignored.
“I wanted the recommendations out before the election,” Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said.
The new 100-member Citizens’ Assembly began its work in New Haven last weekend and is set to conclude on Sept.
26.
“Governors and legislators have kicked around this issue, danced around this issue, without any real reforms, for years.”
DeLong hopes that Republican gubernatorial nominee Sen.
Ryan Fazio of Greenwich and the survivor of the Aug.
11 Democratic primary between Gov.
Ned Lamont and Rep.
Josh Elliott of Hamden will be forced to go even deeper on the property tax conundrum than any candidates before.
Former state Comptroller Bill Curry and former New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, both Democrats, built their gubernatorial campaigns between 1998 and 2006 on pledges to raise income taxes on Connecticut’s wealthy and increase municipal aid.
“I don’t think there’s any question that it’s worsened,” DeLong added, referring to what many call Connecticut’s property tax crisis.
“People are at the breaking point.”
An upside-down tax system
As the only major source of revenue for cities and towns other than state grants, the property tax generates more than any other tax at either level of government in Connecticut.
According to the Department of Revenue Services’ last major tax analysis , the property tax generated $12.5 billion in 2022, about $400 million more than the income tax.
According to the Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, only New Hampshire and New Jersey relied more heavily on property taxes than did Connecticut in 2021.
And while property tax receipts represented 23% of Connecticut’s state and municipal revenue, the national average was just 15%.
Why does that matter?
Property tax is regressive, meaning the rate generally is not adjusted higher or lower to reflect a taxpayers’ income or wealth.
Connecticut’s own tax fairness studies also show regressive tax burdens are more easily transferred from one entity to another.
For example, landlords routinely build their property tax obligations into rent.
And gasoline distributors and filling stations add the wholesale gasoline tax they pay into the price motorists see at the pump.
The lowest-earning 10% of Connecticut workers effectively lost 40% of their income to state and municipal tax burdens in 2022, according to the most recent study , done in late 2025.
The middle three deciles lost 16% to 20%, and the highest-earning decile lost just 10.6%.
So, Connecticut relies heavily on a property tax — that its reports say overburdens working households — to fund most municipal expenses.
To say the tax is entrenched is an understatement.
A 2024 analysis in the Western New England Law Review traces the property tax’s origins back to the 1630s.
And Connecticut cities and towns all have followed a uniform assessment method for more than 50 years, according to legislative researchers .
Further complicating matters, municipal leaders say, the best governors and legislators have been unable to reverse the damage that property taxes have done to schools, the economy and many families’ standard of living.
Is CT headed for a robust property tax debate this fall?
Lamont, who is seeking a third term, is reminding voters he approved $280 million in new municipal aid this year.
Since he took office in 2019, the state has accelerated an effort to bolster its operating aid to local schools.
And PILOT assistance — an acronym for Payment In Lieu Of Taxes – has doubled.
This program reimburses communities for a portion of the revenue they lose because much of the property owned by nonprofit colleges and hospitals is tax-exempt.
And amid all this, in 2023, the governor ordered the first state income tax rate cut since the mid-1990s.
“We cut taxes and increased funding for education and ‘muni’ aid,” the governor said, adding that “we still have a way to go because we fell way behind in the 2010s.”
But CCM says “a way to go” is putting it nicely.
The conference says communities lose more than $400 million annually because overall state aid to school districts generally hasn’t kept pace with inflation with decades.
And the PILOT system, despite its growth, provides only about 50% of the funding required by the state’s own formula.
Governors and legislatures routinely waive the formula requirements and simply provide communities with a lesser amount.
Municipal leaders estimate cities and towns have lost $19 billion in property taxes over the past decade as nonprofits acquired more land and buildings.
Lamont’s chief fiscal focus since 2020 has been on channeling $11 billion in surpluses — forced by aggressive savings rules — to whittle down a hefty pension debt created over seven decades prior to 2011.
Connecticut still owes more than $30 billion in this area, making it one of the most indebted states, per capita, in the nation.
Elliott, who founded the House Progressive Tax Caucus, and many of Lamont’s fellow Democrats say the governor is paying down debt too fast, asking one generation to pay off a burden created by three.
That, they say, has taken a toll on municipal aid and many other programs.
Elliott said he welcomes a robust debate on property taxes, calling Connecticut’s dysfunctional tax system “the predominant and driving force why I’m running.
… It is crushing people’s ability to live in our state.”
Elliott added there is no way to make lasting reform in the property tax without also reshaping Connecticut’s income tax or, more specifically, raising income taxes on the rich, which Lamont won’t do.
“Either Ned Lamont is serious about fixing our system or he is kicking the can down the road,” Elliott said.
“Anything less is just a diversion from reality.”
But Lamont said liberals “want more money for the status quo” and nothing else.
“I think about reform as not only that, but how can they do things differently?
And I think that’s a big difference.”
The governor said he would help communities find economies of scale through regionalization options but not mandates.
CCM has said labor unions often block efforts to regionalize and merge services.
For example, six communities seeking to form one school bus program might need to negotiate new wage and working conditions with a half-dozen driver unions.
When asked if he would be open to revising labor laws, Lamont said only that “I’d hear out CCM.
How do we get this done?”
Fazio, who pitched his plan to ease property tax burdens earlier this summer, shares Lamont’s opposition toward raising taxes on the wealthy, but — like Elliott — he said he welcomes a more intense debate on property taxes.
“I think I am the only one with any long-term solution to alleviate that pain,” said Fazio, who wants to stop unfunded state mandates on municipalities while reducing exemptions for universities and hospitals and capping future tax rate hikes.
Citizens to gubernatorial candidates: Pay attention
Meanwhile, members of the new Citizens’ Assembly, including Dawris Gomez of Bridgeport, a sales manager for Verizon, said it would be wise for all gubernatorial candidates to follow the group’s work over the next two months.
“I think it would certainly go a long way to buy … goodwill capital with the public,” she said.
“So, I’m certainly hopeful.”
“You have 100-plus citizens who are giving up their time to look into this, and our voices need to be heard,” added James N.
Farrell, an East Haven accountant.
A former member of his community’s Board of Education, Farrell said towns face a never-ending struggle to find money for vital programs while acknowledging Connecticut’s high cost of living.
The assembly is receiving research support from political science faculty at the University of Connecticut and Yale.
Professor Michael E.
Morrell, who’s taught at UConn’s Storrs campus for more than two decades, says the state’s reliance on property taxes is too great to allow for any quick fixes.
In other words, if $12 billion in property tax receipts are taken away, cities and towns will need big replacement revenue from some other tax increase.
And that’s never popular with voters.
“I think for elected officials, especially, the politics of it is very daunting,” Morrell said, comparing it to other seemingly intractable problems like rebuilding Connecticut’s aging, congested transportation network without tolls, or expanding affordable housing when many suburbs don’t want to offer it.
And because property tax revenues — spent chiefly on K-12 education — are closely linked to children, “it brings up a lot of feelings of desire for local control that makes it very difficult to to do anything,” Morrell added.
“There are certainly no reforms that are just going to be a panacea, pie-in-the-sky, this-reform-fixes-everything and everyone will be thrilled.”
State Comptroller Sean Scanlon, who also is assisting the assembly, agreed with Morrell that many state officials have shied away from the challenge of reform.
But Scanlon, who formed his own working group last year to study the tax, said reformers’ best chance is to find the sweet spot: substantial, impactful changes that don’t attempt to fix everything in one attempt.
“I think you begin with the question: Is the property tax the fairest way to fund municipal government?”
he said.
“And I think the universal answer is ‘no.’”
If the assembly can present solutions based in fairness, Scanlon added, “I think it’s going to give elected officials the courage to do what they already know they have to do.”
Analysis
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