You asked if the statutes prevent towns from charging their respective boards of education for snow removal, computer repair, or other similar administrative services town agencies provide to the boards. The answer to this question requires a formal legal opinion, which the Office of Legislative Research cannot give. Consequently, you should not regard this report as providing one.

The statutes and case law give towns broad budgetary powers without specifying accepted methods or practices. Consequently, it appears that the law does not prevent a town from requiring each agency to appropriate funds in its budget to pay for the services it receives from other agencies. But, the town's charter might. A charter might specify how agencies must prepare budgets and spend funds.

Your question refers to a method specifying where a town must assign certain costs in its budget. The method requires an agency to appropriate money in its budget to pay for the services it receives from another agency. For example, the police department must appropriate funds for plowing its parking lot and reimburse the public works department for each time it plowed the lot. From an accounting perspective, this arrangement shifts the plowing cost from the public works department to the police department, but does not necessarily reduce the cost of this service.

The statutes give towns broad budgeting powers without prescribing specific budgeting methods. Towns can “establish and maintain a budget system” and “manage, regulate, and control” their finances (CGS §§ 7-148(c) (2) (A) and 7-194, respectively). Consequently, it appears that the statutes do not prohibit towns from adopting any specific budgetary method.

This appears to be the case even with respect to the board of education. By law, the board is solely responsible for preparing the education budget and spending the funds it appropriates (CGS § 10-222). But the board must submit its budget to the town's budget making authority, which acts on it in conjunction with the town's budget. Case law regarding the relative budgetary powers of towns and boards of education suggest that a town can impose budgetary procedures and methods on a board of education as long as they do not prevent the board from fulfilling its statutory obligations.

The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld a local charter provision allowing a town to hold separate referenda on the town and education budgets. Although education funding is a matter of statewide concern, “the particular procedure pursuant to which a municipality adopts its budget, including the procedure that it employs in adopting the education component of the budget, is not itself a matter of statewide concern” (emphasis in the original, Naugatuck Board of Education v. Town and Borough of Nauatuck, 268 Conn. 295 (2004)).

The court also found that the referendum procedure did not affect the board's power to appropriate enough funds to address the town's education needs. The procedure allows voters only to accept or reject the proposed town or education budget, not to amend them. “Thus, although the budget amendment affords voters the opportunity to achieve one or more reductions in the education budget, the magnitude of those reductions is a matter entirely within the discretion of the board of education, subject to the appropriate review by the joint boards” (i. e. , the board of education and the board of finance).

Because neither the statutes nor case law proscribe specific budgetary methods, a town's authority to adopt a specific method might lie in its charter. Or, as in Vernon's case, the charter might authorize the mayor to prescribe the budget format that agencies, including the board of education, must use (Vernon Charter, Chapter XII, §§2-3). Arguably, that budget format could require the board to appropriate funds for the services it receives from other agencies. But, having done so, it appears that the board could obtain those services from private vendors.

We base this conclusion on a charter provision that allows the board to accept bids from town departments for services and commodities (Vernon Charter, Chapter VII, § 1). The board can do this when it bids for services and commodities funded out of its budget. In these cases, the board must accept a department's bid if it is equal to or less than the other bids and reimburse the department with education funds. If the town requires the board to pay for snow removal out of its budget, then it appears that the board can bid this service like the others it funds out of its budget and award the bid to a private vendor.

JR: ts