Mashantucket — Members of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which is holding its annual convention here this week at Foxwoods Resort Casino, called Tuesday for repeal of the state legislature's enactment of a cap on municipal spending.

Speaking to reporters, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, CCM president, called the cap “unworkable” and said it should not be imposed before municipal leaders and legislators have “substantial” discussions about it.

“The state has a financial disaster on its hands, and for them (legislators) to lecture us about our spending is absurd,” Boughton said.

The spending cap was enacted in 2015 as part of a municipal revenue-sharing grant program that is to be funded by state sales tax revenue. By law, beginning July 1, 2017, the commissioner of the state Department of Revenue Services is to begin diverting 7.9 percent of the sales tax revenue the state collects to the Municipal Revenue Sharing Account.

Under the program, towns are to start receiving grants in the current fiscal year. The law sets each town’s grant amount for fiscal years 2017 to 2019 and requires the state Office of Policy and Management to establish grant amounts thereafter.

Starting in fiscal 2018, the state must reduce grants to municipalities whose general fund spending exceeds its spending the previous year by an amount that exceeds the cap, according to a report prepared in August by the legislature’s Office of Legislative Research. The cap is the greater of the inflation rate or 2.5 percent or more of the previous year’s authorized general budget expenditures. Grants are to be reduced by 50 cents for every dollar a municipality spends over the cap.

For the purposes of the program, municipal spending does not include such things as debt service, special education and arbitration awards.

Boughton and others said municipal officials never had an opportunity to provide input on the program.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com