Special Session: Hartford is Officially Insane

The General Assembly convened for a special session on December 8 to deal with what the non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis projected to be deficits of $358 million for Fiscal Year 16, approximately $550 million for Fiscal Year 17 and $3.5 billion in the years following. So for the last two months, Republican and Democrat leadership and Governor Malloy engaged in budget discussions to try and close the budget hole, but talks failed when Democrats refused to include long-term structural reforms as part of the final deficit mitigation plan. I ultimately voted against this mitigation plan because it failed to make all the necessary cuts and left the governor with the authority to cut another $100 million.  This plan continues to make cuts to Medicaid, which results in a direct revenue loss to hospitals to the tune of $30 million, and it failed to make any long-term structural changes to fix our budget woes.  This special session represented the same insane pattern of tax increases, budget failure, and then short-sighted mitigation.  For the past eight years, the majority party has done very little to solve any long term fiscal issues, and I guarantee that we will be back in two months dealing with another deficit. During weeks of talks, legislative leaders and the governor tried to close the current deficit – agreed to be between $350 and $370 million – and also find sustainable ways to prevent future deficits from crippling the state further. Unfortunately, despite good-faith efforts from all sides, lawmakers were unable to agree on a path to fiscal sustainability.   We insisted the immediate deficit be addressed without raising taxes, and that long-term structural changes to the way core government functions and services are funded be made. Some of our proposals to address structural needs included the following: beginning in 2022, pension benefits shall no longer be a contractual right, but governed by statute; implementation of a constitutional spending cap; capping state bond allocations to $1.8 billion per year; create an efficiency planning committee to identify non-profit providers to assume some services currently managed by the state and conduct an in-depth review of each state appropriation to reduce duplication of services. I also voted against the governor's attempt to create a Constitutional Transportation Lockbox. While I support the notion of protecting the raiding of our transportation dollars, the legislation was only a means to deceive the public and did not actually protect transportation funding.  In essence, a Constitutional Transportation Lockbox would ensure that revenues from gasoline and other taxes would be used solely for projects relating to transportation.  The legislation as drafted, however, left it to the legislature and governor to decide what revenues would actually flow into the "lockbox" and allowed them to define what constitutes "transportation".  Representing the height of all irony, the legislature proposed this lockbox, but in the next bill, voted to steal $35 million from the special transportation fund for the operating budget!  No wonder the public doesn't trust government. Connecticut is headed for more difficult years. It is unfortunate that yet again the majority party failed to do the right thing, and I'm more convinced that the only way we are going to change Hartford is by changing the party leadership in the next election because the party in power is not showing the courage to make the tough decisions that are necessary during this critical time.