Posted on August 18, 2017
During a social event last week, a constituent – a long-time Democrat and a friend – approached me insisting to know what compromises the Republicans were prepared to make in order to pass a state budget. He is very concerned – as am I and so many of my colleagues – about the negative impact of having our Governor run our state by executive order in the absence of legislative action.
Under these executive orders, non-profits who work with the elderly and the disabled are being forced into furlough days, veterans’ funeral honor guards have been eliminated, and even the Fresh Food For The Elderly program has been defunded mid-stream, leaving some farmers stuck with worthless state checks they can’t collect.
Amid these devastations the governor announced the establishment of a heavily subsidized bus route linking UConn Storrs to Hartford. Governor Malloy is using taxpayer dollars and mandatory increased student fees to fund a project that makes no sense whatsoever while our state carries a $5.1 billion deficit into this next two-year budget cycle. Still, the worst is likely yet to come. Under this power of executive order, the governor also wants to redistribute education and other municipal aid from our towns to our major cities. This will have a devastating effect on our local schools. Suffield’s educational funding would be cut by 70% (approximately $4.5 million) and East Granby’s by 100% ($1.5 million), so that they are left with nothing.
Republicans had balanced budgets ready to vote on well before the end of the session back on June 7th. We offered three additional budgets that were, at the time before the state’s situation got even worse, balanced and vetted in response to deterioration of the state’s revenue projections over several months. All these budgets included no cuts to education aid, preserved municipal aid, and did not raise taxes. The Democrats, who hold a slim majority in the House (79 to 72), control the agenda and did not allow our budget to even come up for debate, much less a vote. We offered our budget as an amendment to other bills and tried other parliamentary means to get the Republican budget up for a vote, but each time it was defeated along party lines, with the Democrats fearful that it would garner enough votes from their own party to pass.
In the end, I answered my friend’s inquiry with this: In the absence of a negotiating partner, you can’t negotiate with yourself, which brings me to the two major issues that prevent any further progress on this front. First, as I write this the Democrats have not produced a budget; they have merely fashioned a rough framework of a plan that keeps changing. All we have seen from them are a proposed 6.99% (then changed to 6.75%) sales tax increase, a new restaurant tax, new tolls, and so on. Democrats hold a majority in the House, tie-breaking power in the Senate and the state’s governorship. They could pass a budget all by themselves if they get their act together. But they aren’t willing to take the lead.
Second, and even more important, is that Democrats rushed through approval of the SEBAC agreement – the umbrella document that outlines state employee union benefits – on essentially a party line vote. In doing so, they blocked the legislature’s path to many of the long-term structural changes that our state needs in order to regain sound financial footing. This agreement, negotiated by the governor’s budget office and rushed through the house the day after final approval by the state’s unions, locks in employee benefits for ten years: until 2027. And while some classes of state employees will be making greater contributions to their health care and future pensions, there are still guaranteed raises, limited curbs of overtime calculations for pension benefits, and a no-layoff provision that will severely limit the state’s ability to downsize government. We are now facing a potential prison closure, as well as expanded use of non-profits for care and support of physical and mental health, that will now be more difficult to implement. There may be some short-term savings, but we will all be paying for this agreement in the next budget cycles through deeper budget cuts and increased taxes.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Republicans remain at the negotiating table, waiting for the Democrats to step out from behind closed doors and do their part to produce an actual budget for further discussion. It is unfortunate that they have bargained away many of the opportunities we may have had to make necessary structural changes to the way our state operates – and get control over runaway spending – in order to ensure the bright future that I sincerely believe is still possible for our state.
If you have any questions about this issue, or would like to discuss state government with me, I would love to hear from you at Tami.Zawistowski@cga.ct.gov or 1-800-842-1423. You can also follow my legislative activity on my website at www.repzawistowski.com, or my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/repzawistowski.