State Reps Negotiate To Save Horse Guard

By Kendra Bobowick

Will the Second Company Governor’s Horse Guard cease to be due to lack of state budget funds? Newtown’s state representatives are pushing the governor’s staff for a better answer.

One money-saving plan under review by the governor’s office would consolidate the state’s two horse guard units. The First Company Governor’s Horse Guard is based in Avon.

Wednesday, April 13, State Representatives DebraLee Hovey and Christopher Lyddy and others met with the governor’s staff with her proposal “for a compromise,” according to Ms Hovey.

“[Governor Dannel Malloy] says he’ll look at it, but there are no guarantees,” Ms Hovey said this week. Her suggestions are “not a done deal,” but she is pleased to be discussing what she feels is a “pretty valid proposal.”

The state’s two horse guards occupy a militia line-item of $78,000. Ms Hovey would like to split that sum between two horse guard facilities, then see their 501 (c)(3)s used to fundraise and offset costs. She then proposes that a task force assemble “to look at how to reorganize the militias so they could be self-sustaining.”

She hopes her ideas will “take [the horse guard’s] elimination off the table and allow Connecticut to sustain its 200-year-old tradition.” She said, “It’s hypothetical at this point.”

The problem of funding and maintaining the horse guard “comes up every year; it’s always an issue and we need to deal with this in a thoughtful manner.” Ms Hovey stressed that the horse guard’s volunteer contributions to the public “are huge.” The members’ show a “huge amount of commitment,” and their “value is immeasurable.”

The representative hopes to successfully resolve with the governor’s office how best to preserve the militia without burdening the taxpayers, and what an eventual task force might do.

At the moment, she urges supporters to “continue to be vigilant” and contact the governor and “reinforce that the Newtown facility is viable and could almost be self-sustaining.”