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8 Hartford Business Journal • April 3, 2017 www.HartfordBusiness.com K E Y N O T E D E E P - S E A E X P L O R E R A N D D I S C O V E R E R O F T H E T I T A N I C A N D L I F E A T T H E B O T T O M O F T H E S E A H O N O R E E T I C K E T S T O R E S E R V E , V I S I T T H E W O R L D A F F A I R S C O U N C I L O F C T W E B S I T E A T C T W A C . O R G O R C A L L ( 8 6 0 ) 2 4 1 - 6 1 1 8 S P O N S O R S H I P O P P O R T U N I T I E S A V A I L A B L E from page 1 said he wasn't surprised by the government- sector job losses considering the casino competition that has sprung up around Connecticut. "It shows what happens when we don't compete," Doba said. "When New York launched its gaming enterprise, we sat back and did nothing. When Rhode Island got in the game, we sat back and did nothing." There's a clear record of what will hap- pen if the state doesn't compete to keep the industry's good-paying jobs and benefits, he said. At their peak, the tribes employed about 23,000 people combined versus about 14,000 now by tribal estimates. The General Assembly is considering a bill to grant a third casino to MMCT and another bill to open up casino bidding to others. Critics say a third casino, particu- larly one located just 13 miles from MGM's Springfield venue, will do little to curb job losses and only add to an oversaturated gaming market. Local government headaches With Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposed budget calling for municipalities to cover a third of teachers' state pension costs, about $400 million, and other education cost shifts, towns are facing the prospect of higher property taxes or more cuts to bal- ance their budgets, neither popular. Almost everyone agrees, though, that Malloy's bud- get faces significant revisions. "At the local government level, there's an overdependence on the property tax and residents don't want to pay anymore in property taxes than they already have been paying," said Kevin Maloney, spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipali- ties (CCM). Under pressure to restrain tax hikes, but with cuts to state aid and President Donald Trump's proposed federal budget portend- ing possible federal aid cuts, "that puts towns between a rock and a hard place, and they have to make cuts because they don't have the revenues to pay for everything," Maloney said. Maloney said he wasn't surprised by the jobs lost in the government sector last year, 4,400 from Jan. 2016 to Jan. 2017, according to the latest data from the state Department of Labor. That was the largest job loss in raw numbers, not percentage terms, for any sector. CCM has tracked local government closely and there have been cutbacks and layoffs, and moves not to significantly replace people as they retire, Maloney said. A court decision calling for a better way to fund local public education presents additional funding uncertainties for cites and towns, he said. "That's also in the mix in terms of the pressures that are going to come to bear on the state budget and local budgets, so that's another sort of question mark that hasn't landed yet in terms of a defined answer," Maloney said. East Hartford has felt the money pinch as far back as 1991, cutting 76 non-public safety jobs since then, said Mayor Mar- cia Leclerc. "Providing a variety of valuable services like leaf collection, road plowing, senior transportation and emergency response with fewer employees has been a challenge and other communities will be impacted just as East Hartford was," Leclerc said. East Hartford's total town employment stands at 1,712 full-time employees, includ- ing the board of education. The board is down 68 employees since 2014, a response to stagnant aid from the state, and it's try- ing to raise test scores with fewer teachers, tutors and student aides, Leclerc said. "So you can see how we're impacted and state and federal aid in the future looks even more tenuous," she said. Going forward, the town remains concerned about state aid cuts because expenses grow, even if only by inflation, the mayor said. "We have made program restructurings and we understand the taxpayers have been saturated, so it's a difficult and never-ending job balancing the community's need for ser- vices and their ability to pay," Leclerc said. State budget constraints At the state level, if $700 million can't be saved through concessions, money will have to be found somewhere in major spending categories, said Chris McClure, spokesman at the Office of Policy and Management. "I doubt there's an appetite that takes a Casino jobs hit hardest within gov't sector Connecticut casinos, including Mohegan Sun (shown above) and Foxwoods, have lost about 7,000 jobs since 2008. P H O T O | C O N T R I B U T E D