By Alma Graham, CT State Grange Legislative Director

I hope you all have submitted your resolutions to the State Grange Central Office for the upcoming State Grange Session. We ask they be submitted to the Central Office by September 15 to give the office time to put them together for the next couple of steps. They are usually included in the next publication of the Granger. The State Grange President and Executive Committee also need to review them and assign them to the different session committees. The resolutions are also printed in a booklet that is given out as State Grange for the Delegates.

The resolution(s) should have been voted on by both your local Grange and then submitted to your Pomona Grange where they are reviewed and voted on. This will give your resolution a wider audience for the issue when it comes up at State Grange and your Pomona delegates will understand the issue.

IF and I mean IF you have an issue that comes up late in the year and you with to submit a resolution after the September 15^th deadline, send it in anyway. We can usually accept and include some last minute resolutions. If they are very late, they may not be included in the Session Booklet. The Secretary will then request enough copies to distribute to each delegate and the State officers at Session.

For the State of Connecticut, well… we still don’t have a budget. The state has been running on executive orders by Governor Malloy. The towns are all in limbo as to what funds they will be receiving for town programs. This has resulted in many cuts to social service programs where Malloy has cut funding. These cuts are mostly impacting the larger towns. Smaller towns don’t have the number of service programs that larger towns and cities such as Bridgeport and Hartford have. The biggest impact on towns seems to be funding for education. Malloy has pushed for increasing funding for poorer towns and for cutting funds for more well-to-do towns. The Legislature is supposed to work on the budget in early September after they return from their summer vacations. We will see.