Candidates for State Senate Debate Future of New Canaan’s Metro-North Branch Line

[A message from the League of Women Voters of New Canaan: If you or any friends couldn’t attend Candidates Night on Tuesday at New Canaan High School, please check the Channel 79 website (www.nctv79.org) for the viewing schedule beginning Friday morning, Oct. 24th.]

Connecticut’s 20 percent subsidy for rail commuters “very clearly” would go away if there’s a change in administration this fall, a candidate for office in the state legislature said Tuesday.

What’s more, branch lines lose money and unless the state has a “concerned governor” in office, “branch service will be gone,” Philip Sharlach, a Democrat and Wilton resident who is challenging incumbent State Sen. Toni Boucher (R-26) said during a “Meet the Candidates” forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of New Canaan.

“In the short-term, New Canaan, you’ve got a problem,” he said.

Sharlach added: “To think that it can’t happen is absolutely ridiculous, because it almost happened before. Bad things happen to good people. This could happen to you.”

More than 60 people attended the forum, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School, co-sponsored by the New Canaan Advertiser and moderated by the league’s Susan LaPerla.

Divided into two segments featuring candidates for New Canaan’s delegations to each house of the Connecticut General Assembly, all four of those in the running for state Senate seats that include New Canaan were in attendance: incumbents Boucher (whose district includes all of Redding and Wilton—her hometown—as well as parts of Bethel, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Weston and Westport) and State Sen. L. Scott Frantz (R-36), a Greenwich resident who represents all of his hometown as well as parts of Stamford and New Canaan; Sharlach and Green Party candidate Ed Heflin, a Wall Street consultant headquartered in Cos Cob who is challenging Frantz.

Topics included education, taxes, Connecticut’s financial viability, problems with Metro-North Railroad and energy. (We’ll publish a summary of the state House of Representatives’ part of the forum on Wednesday.)

The question of how to address the concerns of Fairfield County commuters on Metro-North drew some of the strongest language of the night.

Frantz, a member of the legislature’s transportation committee (Boucher is a ranking member), called shutting down the New Canaan line “an impossibility.”

“The tax revenue to the state from New Canaan is just far too large,” Frantz said, putting the figure at about $425 million per year.

“So that would be political suicide and maybe even worse. To try and think about shutting down the New Canaan lines, I just don’t think that would fly.”

Frantz also countered that “the administration” is taking money from a special transportation fund in order to balance the budget.

“The number of tricks and political chicanery that occurs up there is beyond belief,” Frantz said. “And all of this money could be put into the rails and making it cheaper for commuters and safer and more efficient for commuters, is being diverted, and I think that is a crying shame.”

Boucher, who said repeatedly through the forum that the genesis of many of the state’s problem stem from “one-party” (Democratic) rule, added that if Connecticut pays 65 percent of the cost of Metro-North Railroad under the MTA, then the state should have 65 percent representation on its board.

“We don’t have it,” she said. “We have a contract that I have tried to open up several times but it needs leadership in the executive office and it needs federal intervention as well. We are getting there slowly but surely. We have infrastructure that is deplorable and the worst roads in the state—in America, in fact. So we have issues of funding that has not really been because we lack funding, because our funding has been diverted to other purposes, including balancing our budget so we have a great deal to do in the area of transportation.”

Heflin said he agreed that it would be “political suicide” to shutter the New Canaan Metro-North branch line, and thought it would never happen—yet, the other side of that is that ticket fares will increase because of mismanagement. More than once during the forum, including at this point, Heflin said he would hold Frantz’s “feet to the fire” as an incumbent—in this case, as a member of the CGA transportation committee.

“You do have a voice and a strong voice in that committee, and the fact that the service is even being contemplated to being cut or somehow reduced is a travesty here,” Heflin said.