To The Editor:

Every year at the Capitol I submit a bill proposal to fully fund Connecticut’s Educational Cost Sharing (“ECS”) Formula, and reset its “foundation” to a level that reflects a reality that was abandoned by Hartford Democrats in 2013.

Why do I do this? Because for 13 years, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not increased ECS in the state budget. As a 14-year member of the state’s Education Committee, I know and feel the frustration in every budget cycle, and never stop asking how the State of Connecticut comes up short on its “fair share” of cost sharing dollars.

As I read my opponent’s letter from September 4, I couldn’t help but wonder how someone who has seen school budgets from the inside, and has admittedly been aware of the State Democrat Leadership’s freezing of ECS dollars for 13-years could possibly think to associate a common understanding of the problem as anything other than the repeatedly careless “reprioritization” of billions of dollars in local educational cost sharing.

Sure, “Newtown Deserves Property Tax Relief” is a great headline that most everyone can agree upon. Too bad the first three paragraphs of her letter are either plagiarized from one of my 2026 or earlier speeches in the Education Committee and on the Floor of the House, or from an AI regurgitation of my words.

Fact: The Governor and Democrat leadership have frozen the state’s Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) “foundation” grants since 2013. I, and many of my colleagues, along with the State Department of Education (SDE) and the teachers’ union have been advocating for full-funding ECS year after year, after year.

Ironically, my opponent’s reasoning that, somehow, a greater supermajority presence in Hartford will correct Connecticut’s supermajority-imposed crisis in public education underfunding, and the resulting assault on local property-taxpayer burdens created by it is simply preposterous.

Representative Mitch Bolinsky

Newtown