Tipping Fees are Spilling out of the CRRA budget
Vernon, CT. April 14, 2008. The Town of Vernon, CT, hired an auditor, last month and audit officials have found inappropriate assumptions and charges in the CRRA’s recently approved Mid-Conn budget for 2009, Hal Cummings, Vernon’s town lawyer, said Friday, April 11th.
As a result of the accountant’s findings, the lawyers who won a $36 million judgment last year in the lawsuit over Enron are preparing a request for an injunction against CRRA, Cummings said.
The injunction would bar CRRA from imposing a tipping fee of $72 for each ton of trash that the 70 towns take to the authority’s trash-burning plant in Hartford beginning July 1, when the 2009 budget year begins.
Paul Nonnenmacher, a spokesman for CRRA, defended the 2009 budget and said it was based on the cost of operations. But Cummings said the budget, upon which the fees are based, is “more of a fiction than reality. Some of the cost estimates and expense items are overstated,” he said. If you look at the 2008 budget that [Superior Court Judge Dennis] Eveleigh found was overstated, they’re doing the same thing this time in the 2009 budget.”
Attys David Golub and Joseph Meaney, the lead lawyers in the towns’ lawsuit against CRRA, challenged the authority’s 2008 budget last year and sought an injunction. Eveleigh found that some interest income was understated and several expense items, including the cost of closing the Hartford landfill in January, were overstated. Eveleigh ordered CRRA to cut its tipping fee by about $8 a ton.
Find the Hartford Courant entire article at:
Hartford Courant Story dated April 14, 2008 .
Or The Journal Inquirer article at: Vernon looking to get out of the CRRA contract, dated April 15, 2008.
Blogs too: US FInance News, CT News Junkie , Waterbury Republican,
Carl Slicer, blog editor, www.VernonGop.com , “It’s only your money.”
Tags: Atty Hal Cummings, Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, CRRA, CT, Hartford Courant, injunction, Journal Inquirer, Mayor Jason McCoy, tipping fees, Town of Vernon, Vernon, Vernon Mayor, Vernon Mayor McCoy
