Earlier in the week I interviewed Dan Malloy, current mayor of Stamford and former gubernatorial candidate. As always, Malloy impressed with his firm grasp of not only operating a major city, but of the regional and statewide issues that effect us all. This is the first part of that interview.

Malloy recently presented a Stamford city budget that the Stamford Advocate reported would increase property taxes by 8%. But on the subject of budgets Malloy pointed out, “City side government continues to be smaller than when I took office in 1995. Technology and training are ongoing investments; if you do it, it pays.”

As with most municipal budgets, the lion’s share gets devoted to education spending. I asked Malloy about his thoughts on Rell’s Education focused State budget.

“I gave her credit initially as a Republican for raising the issue,” he responded, “but what I now come to appreciate that what she’s really done is try and figure out if the spaghetti is done by throwing it against the wall. No sooner did she ignite the discussion, than she appears to run away from it. Education funding and our over reliance on property taxes is not going to be resolved or see progress made on it by throwing out an idea and then running away from it. It is just not going to happen. I gave her credit for believing what she said but I’m started to wonder if that is the case.”

Not surprisingly, Malloy had thoughts on the Republican support, or lack of that Rell’s budget was generating.

“I suspect that’s what’s causing some problems for the Governor. I think she’s a good person. She misgauged the degrees of animosity produced amongst her Republican fellows. I am sure she now feels she should have a few more of them around the table when she was putting this together. On the other hand looking at Republican leadership in the Senate in the House they don’t seem to know what they want either. They want less. They don’t know what it is they want less of, but they want the ability to take credit for what is spent.”

A good example of Rell’s scattershot approach to budgeting can be found in her new funding for the Arts. Rell has proposed reducing the budget for the arts from $9 million to $5 million for the next year, and creating a $10 million grant pool in state arts funding. Jennifer Askinovich, former Culture and Tourism commissioner, says she was surprised that Rell’s budge phased out earmarks in just one year, and had suggested a plan that would introduce phase outs over 3 years. Malloy was more forceful.

When asked about the funding cuts, Malloy responded; “Absolutely atrocious. This is a bad idea which has resurfaced in every governor’s  budget in the past 12 years I’ve been mayor. For whatever reason, John Rowland and Jodi Rell have tried to balance the budget on the meager backsides of art institutions. Particularly, at the time she was running, she made a big deal on how supportive of the arts she was.”

Malloy stressed how these cuts would affect Stamford. He continued, “[This] imperils the fiscal stability of the Stamford Center For the Arts. Even stranger, is that no city in the state produces as much revenue via the hotel tax, which is supposed to go to support the arts, than Stamford does. What this Governor did in her first two budgets is, I think, to continue to steal money out of the pots that would have been distributed to arts organizations [and instead] to pay for Adrienne’s Landing. Adrienne’s Landing needs to rise and fall on is own merits. Certainly not be the reason that other arts institutions in the state close.”

Malloy questions the logic behind the arts budget, noting that Rell has gone down the path of using the hotel tax to pay off things that it was never intended to be used for and that tourism is not supported statewide. “The legislature,” he said, “has become used to the concept of some level of passive resistance. So they’ll stand up for the arts, not to make sure they are held harmless from loss, but to make sure they don’t lose as much as the Governor says they should. But that’s an extremely slippery slope, which I think now is on the verge of imperiling a number of arts institutions and tourist attractions in the state.”

“The bigger question; if Stamford generates more overnight stays than every other jurisdiction in the state, shouldn’t you be investing more money in tourism in Stamford, not less? In the time that I’ve been mayor more and more of that money has been taken away.”

In the Next part of this interview Dan Malloy speaks to the Governor’s race in 2010 and how transportation issues affect the region.

Dan Malloy will be appearing at a St. Patrick’s Day Party on Sunday March 11, at 5pm. More details here.