Politics & Government

East Windsor Waits to Hear How Federal Sequester Will Affect Town Coffers

With much of the federal money threatened to be reduced or eliminating usually be funneled through the state to the towns, East Windsor officials are unsure of how much the town could stand to lose.

With millions of dollars of funding for programs from special education to unemployment to national defense hanging in the balance, local officials are waiting to hear what the automatic federal budget cuts will mean for their towns.

In East Windsor, First Selectman Denise Menard said it was too early to tell precisely what impact, if any, sequestration would have on the town budget.

Connecticut could lose middle class jobs and "vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and women in uniform" under the automatic federal budget cuts known as the sequester that are looming this week, the White House said Sunday in a summary of the budget reductions.

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The budget cuts would see the state lose $8.7 million in education funding along with another $6.3 million in federal funds to help students with disabilities.
Menard said that she would be meeting with the town treasurer on Monday to discuss sequestration and other issues related to the budget.

Still, it is difficult to see how much of an effect the federal cuts will have on East Windsor, Menard said, because federal money tends to be filtered through to the state before it comes to the town.

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“It’s not so much a case of, ‘Oh yeah, it will cut this or that,’” Menard said. “It’s more complex than that. What gets cut at the federal level affects the state. We don’t get much direct federal funding.”

Menard said that it will be uncertain how the sequester actually affects the town unless and until it happens.

While East Windsor doesn’t receive much direct federal funding, Menard said that the sequester’s impact on the local economy would be significant.

“The fact that it will cause job losses is alarming across the board,” said Menard, noting that Hamilton Sunstrand and Pratt & Whitney are local federal defense contractors that could be affected.

“The job losses and cuts to social services can cascade down to us and it is very alarming,” Menard said. “We hope our senators and congressmen do the right thing and get [a deal] done so we don’t go down to sequestering mode.”

East Windsor Superintendent of Schools Dr. Theresa Kane said that she was “deeply concerned” about the possibility of the federal government cutting any or all of the $500,000 in grants the school district received in 2011-12.

While it was too early to tell what grants would be cut, Kane said that East Windsor - and virtually every school district in Connecticut - received some federal funding.

Kane said that any reduction would hurt the East Windsor school district, and an entire elimination of funding “would be devastating for us.”

“We’re watching this very carefully to see how this is going to unfold,” Kane said. “I have not seen firm parameters as to what it would mean for each district or each state. … Lots of things can happen right up until the deadline. We’re going to wait to see how it plays out. With this kind of political volatility [in Washington, D.C.], anything can happen.”


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