Posted on March 10, 2017
HARTFORD – Earlier this week a bill that prohibits the Department of Public Health from consolidating the district Departments of Health and Municipal Health Authorities was brought before the Public Health Committee in a public hearing. State Representative Kathleen McCarty (R-38), as a member of the committee, submitted a letter to her public health leaders and fellow members expressing her strong support for the bill, which was introduced by her colleague Rep. Cheeseman of East Lyme, a neighboring town to her district. Please see Rep. McCarty’s testimony below.
Dear Chairmen Gerratana, Somers, Steinberg, Ranking Member Srinivasan and distinguished members of the Public Health Committee,
I am in full support of H.B. 5169 as I have introduced a similar proposal contained in H.B. 6703.
The Town of Waterford, along with many of its neighboring towns including: East Lyme, Groton, Ledyard, Old Lyme, and New London in Southeastern Connecticut are members of Ledge Light Health District. The current structure of district departments of health is working well and providing quality health services to the residents of our region. There is no need to initiate a change to this structure that is working exceedingly well for so many municipalities in Southeastern Connecticut.
Furthermore, the exorbitant cost of operating in a regional health district for the Town of Waterford would be cost prohibitive. Given the zeroing out of Educational Cost Sharing funding to the Town of Waterford, the potential of increased municipal mandates, coupled with the reduction of many other state grants to the town, the regionalization of district health departments would be its final economic blow. The estimated additional cost to the Town of Waterford would be in the neighborhood of one million dollars. Just as important, however, is the uncertainty that a regionalized health district would be able to provide the same level of health services that are presently provided by Ledge Light Health District to the 127,000 residents that it currently serves.
After attending a recent local presentation given by the Commissioner of Public Health regarding the proposed consolidation of health departments into a regionalized health district, and not hearing one resident or town official at the presentation in favor of such a plan, I am more convinced than ever that this is the wrong direction for the Public Health Department to be pursuing.
The consolidation of health departments into a regionalized health district has the potential of jeopardizing the quality of health services for the residents of Waterford and other municipalities in Southeastern Connecticut that belong to local health districts.
If there exists areas in the state that do not have access to quality and equitable health services then the Public Health Department should continue to work on finding creative solutions that would protect and serve those areas without doing harm to district health departments that serve the rest of Connecticut’s residents.
For these reasons, I respectfully request that the Public Health Committee reject the consolidation of district health departments.
Thank you for permitting me to express my opinion on this important topic.
Sincerely,
Kathleen M. McCarty
State Representative, 38th District
Waterford, Montville