More Shared Sacrifice Is In The Cards

A Connecticut paper that has never met a tax increase in did not approve breaks the news gently. So gimmicky is Governor Dannel Malloy’s budget that it puts the editorial board in mind of Mr. Malloy’s predecessor, former Governor Jodi Rell, whose budgets – all of them passed by the Democratic dominated General Assembly – relied heavily on such gimmicks as moving red ink into future budgets, excessive borrowing to balance ordinary expenditures, and other sleights of hand that, Mr. Malloy said in his first campaign for governor, were exceedingly dishonest.

This year, the paper chides, “Now, pushed into a corner by a lag in tax revenues, Mr. Malloy and the majority Democrats in the General Assembly are using gimmicks of their own in passing what they say is a balanced budget for the fiscal year that begins July .”

The post-election year will open with a bang of a deficit -- $1.3 billion or more. That is the amount Mr. Malloy and the Democratic dominated General Assembly must wring out of the first year of Connecticut’s biennial budget if Mr. Malloy hopes to keep his “no new taxes” pledge, or …

Or what?

There are only two ways to discharge a deficit, if one abjures the usual gimmicks used in the past to balance Connecticut’s books: Either you raise taxes, or you cut spending.

For purposes of re-election, Mr. Malloy has several times insisted he would not balance the books through tax increases. Funny how all politicians turn into former President George H. W. Bush – “Read my lips. No new taxes” – when the middle class, heavily burdened with the largest broad based tax increase in Connecticut’s history, is about to march to the polls.

Mr. Malloy already has played his “shared sacrifice” card. To be sure, the shared sacrifice of unionized state workers was not quite as burdensome to unions as was Mr. Malloy’s “shared sacrifice” tax increases to taxpayers, which is why, come to think of it, former state Senator Edith Prague chastised union leaders for balking at the deal -- a very good one for unionized state employees -- Mr. Malloy held out to SEBAC during negotiations prior to the signing of his first budget. Mrs. Prague said at the time that union leaders would be nuts not to have accepted Mr. Malloy’s best offer, which included salary increases of three percent nine years out. After some knuckle biting, the unions supinely accepted Mr. Malloy offer. They would have been nuts to reject it.

The tax increase card already having been overplayed, Mr. Malloy was under pressure this time around to promise, several times, that he was done increasing taxes. He had strained himself boosting taxes on nail salon owners during his first year in office. Taxpayers had sacrificed enough. This leaves Mr. Malloy with only one card remaining in his hand – multi-billion dollar spending for each of the next two years. Projected deficit figures are brought to us by the same Malloyalists who had recently calculated a surplus of half a billion dollars, a figure quickly whittled down by reality to a little over fifty million.

Recent polls do not indicate a sunny re-election effort by Mr. Malloy. A Quinnipiac poll conducted between February and March found 29 percent of voters approving Mr. Malloy’s handling of taxes while 63 percent disapproved. On his handling of the economy and jobs, 33 percent approved while 60 percent disapproved, while on his handling of the budget, 37 percent approved while 53 percent disapproved.

A week before the Republican nominating convention, Mr. Malloy unfurled his “no new taxes pledge” once again: "I do not believe we will do anything but cut taxes for the foreseeable future."

The “foreseeable future” will pass by Connecticut ears like a shot.  If there is in Connecticut one editorial writer, one political commentator, one union leader or one much plucked taxpayer who sincerely believes that Mr. Malloy will wring out of the hides of state workers the entire future multi-billion dollar state deficits, that person, now carefully concealed behind then flower pot, has yet to show his head. Nearly everyone in the state who thinks seriously about budget deficits “gets” the gubernatorial wink: “No new taxes” -- until the big spenders have all been re-elected.

The rational for raising new taxes in the foreseeable future will be what it has ever been: Despite years of throwing tax dollars in their direction, the poor are poorer. And besides, Connecticut’s huge and ungovernable dispensary of tax dollars cannot afford to lift the debt burden all by its lonesome self.

Those who have not already left the state for greener pastures elsewhere would be wise to hit the bunkers and prepare for SHARED SACRIFICE II.

Malloy, The Budget And The Pinocchio Test

On budget matters, the governor proposes and the legislature disposes. Connecticut’s General Assembly has in the past been disposed to tinker with budgets presented by the state’s chief executive.  No one knows precisely what the Democratic dominated General Assembly will do to a budget that has been etch a sketched by Governor Dannel Malloy and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly.

Once again this fiscal year, Mr. Malloy and Democratic legislative leaders have stiffed Republicans on budget matters. During Mr. Malloy’s first budget negotiations, Republican leaders were shooed out of the room so they might not interfere with delicate negotiations then underway between Mr. Malloy’s agents and union leaders representing SEBAC, the state union conglomerate authorized to negotiate contracts with the governor. On that occasion, Democratic leaders in the General Assembly pre-approved a budget submitted to them by Mr. Malloy and invested him with plenipotentiary powers to make whatever adjustments SEBAC, Connecticut’s fourth branch of government, and the governor thought advisable.

The budget was batted around between Mr. Malloy’s Malloyalists and union leaders. After a few bloody rounds, a budget sprang forth about which Edith Prague, a union friendly state senator, said that union leaders would be crazy to reject it. It was rejected by the union crazies, more negotiations ensued, and finally a budget was produced that, Mr. Malloy said, was balanced , contained no gimmicks, was GAAP compliant and “fair share” observant.

Mr. Malloy’s first budget, heavily freighted with the largest tax increase in state history, tilted several times since it had been extruded, sausage-like, from the Democratic dominated General Assembly. There are some number crunchers – though none among the Malloyalist crew, save Comptroller Kevin Lembo, who sometimes demurrers – who doubt that Mr. Malloy’s first budget ever was in balance.

Now comes Mr. Malloy’s second budget – and how fares it?

So far, the second budget appears to be a deja vu all over again repeat of the first.

Republicans – called upon by the governor to iron out in a special session a few deficit wrinkles, a love fest praised by both Mr. Malloy and Republican leaders as a show of non-partisanship the national government would do well to copy – once again have been shown the door.

A one party state like Connecticut does not need the budget input of a bystander party. And never mind that the Connecticut Supreme Court recently ruled that Republicans should command the top line on the ballot in future elections because Mr. Malloy’s party garnered fewer votes than the Republican Party in the gubernatorial election; it was THAT close, Mr. Malloy winning the election because of votes cast by the putatively independent  Working Families Party.

Every time Mr. Malloy failed to include Republicans in his budget negotiations he disenfranchised the majority of Republican and Democratic Party voters who cast their ballots in his gubernatorial election. This budget year, Mr. Malloy – who twice refused to include Republicans in his budget deliberations – cited Republicans in the General Assembly for failing to offer a shadow budget. Chutzpah, thy name is Malloy.

Mr. Malloy’s budget outline will be presented to the General Assembly, which likely will tinker with the product in an attempt to satisfy union dependent Democratic members in the legislature.

Mr. Malloy recommended his budget to the Democratic dominated General Assembly -- and to the general public -- with his chest expanding to incoming Republican rhetorical bullets: “The bottom line is we will not increase taxes or create any new taxes. The budget will be in balance and will be GAAP-compliant.”

A story in CTMirror added a few cautious “buts” to Mr. Malloy’s brag.

The Malloy budget would not “increase taxes or create any new taxes” in keeping with a previous Malloy pledge that followed the imposition of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history. But “…it also would extend some controversial taxes on businesses and power plants that had been set to expire next year." And but... "It also implements one of the largest tax hikes on gasoline and other fuels in state history on July 1 -- an increase approved in 2005 -- while diverting all of the proceeds to non-transportation programs.” And but “…it also employs a controversial new interpretation of Medicaid budgeting that effectively would remove more than $1 billion from under the constitutional spending cap over the next two fiscal years. The affected Medicaid programs are paid for up-front with state dollars, but all costs are reimbursed with federal aid.”

Mr. Malloy’s budget raises spending, raises taxes and is over reliant on federal reimbursements from an Obamacare that has in it more mirrors and trapdoors than a funhouse. Obamacare recently has met a stiff resistance from union chiefs who fear that union membership will be reduced after the very expensive Obamacare proposition compromises union offered health plans. No word yet from SEBAC as to whether they will join their brothers on the union line who fear that Obamacare will reduce both union membership and dues.

Bottom line: Spending in Connecticut will increase under its present union reliant one party state. And since taxation follows in the rut of spending, taxes in the future will also increase. Neutered legislative Republicans are simply too cowardly to place exorbitant spending rather than tax increases at the center of their assault against a runaway progressivism -- because they too reap the political fruits of heedless spending.

The Democrats’ 10 Percent Solution With Malloy as Firewall

The split between Connecticut’s two major parties is most dramatic on the question of spending.

Governor Dannel Malloy took a pledge early in his administration, after he had imposed upon the state the largest tax increase in its history, reminiscent of a pledge made by former President H.W. Bush: No new tax increases. Internal pressures were such during the Bush administration that the president reneged on his pledge.

The pressures are always there, especially in tax prone Connecticut. It was the fashion during the administration of Republican Maverick turned Independent Lowell Weicker to regard deficits as revenue rather than spending problems; and, of course, the solution to a revenue problem is to boost revenue.

This misperception – always encouraged by politicians uncomfortable with spending cuts – had tripled the bottom line of Connecticut’s budgets within the space of three governors. Focused on revenue boosts, Mr. Weicker and succeeding Republican Governors John Rowland and Jodi Rell rarely were put in the uncomfortable position of having to disappoint powerful union interests. Spending inched inexorably up.

When Mr. Malloy was installed as governor, it was generally supposed that the spending tap would be turned wide open. The so called“firewalls,” Republican governors who had offered a mild resistance to spending increases, were gone: Laissez les bons temps rouler, as they say during Marti Gras in New Orleans that precedes an abstemious Lent .

Democratic leaders in the General Assembly, impatient with the snail’s pace progress of a self-proclaimed progressive governor, have now proposed changes in the Malloy budget that increase spending by 10 percent. There is every reason to believe that Democrats stuck on stupid are still in a “let the good times roll” frame of mind.

And why not? Moderate Republican office holders in Connecticut have been washed away by the onrushing progressive high tide. Consider the number of Republican moderates who have fallen in recent years under the boots of the progressive hordes in Connecticut. Within Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation alone, three moderate Republicans– Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays, the last moderate Republican in New England before he surrendered his seat to current Democratic U.S. Representative Jim Himes -- had been replaced by ambitious progressives. Mr. Malloy and his Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman proudly march cheek by jowl with striking union workers, and no one winces. The largest tax increase in Connecticut history was accompanied with a union deal that assured salary and benefit increases to state workers of 3 percent nine years out, an arrangement at first rejected by union representatives, which rejection was characterized by Edith Prague, a longtime supporter of Connecticut unions, as a form of unthinking madness.

Despite a stalled economy, the progressive parade in Connecticut marches merrily and heedlessly on. Occasional disputes with leaders in the opposition party are imperiously brushed aside by Democrats who outnumber Republicans in the state by a commanding two to one majority. The difference in sheer numbers relieves Democrats of the necessity of quibbling over crucial economic points imperfectly grasped by an easily distractible media in the grip of an economic vise that has considerably reduced its own numbers.

What all this really means is that Mr. Malloy has now become Connecticut’s spending “firewall.”And the governor is surrounded by progressive Democrats quite certain that more spending will hasten the arrival of better times, a philosophy of governance to which Mr. Malloy also subscribes. On matters upon which there are some discernible differences between Mr. Malloy and the Democrat dominated General Assembly –say, education reform – Mr. Malloy’s programs have been refined by progressive leaders in the legislature. Both President Pro Tem of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey have had a good deal of practice in curbing the modest ambitions of past Republican governors, and there is no reason to suppose they will not employ their talents to frustrate a governor who proves to be insufficiently progressive on matters they consider ideologically important – like, to fetch for one example, ramping up the progressive income tax on Connecticut Gold Coast millionaires.

While Mr. Malloy has said he is averse to tax increases, he has moved steadily in the direction of increasing state revenue through a series of measures – borrowing money to pay off budget expenses, reneging on a gentleman’s agreement with “bad” energy producers to liquidate a “temporary” tax on the production of electricity, boosting the notorious gross receipt tax on gasoline, and short-sheeting hospitals, to cite but four examples – that most charitably may be described as revenue enhancers.

All eyes in the General Assembly are fastened on the governor. Given an inch, progressive legislators have now demanded a yard – a ten percent increase in spending. It is precisely incremental increasing in spending of this kind that has tripled the bottom line of Connecticut budgets since the imposition of the state income tax in 1991, a short two decades ago. Progressives in the General Assembly are betting that while the governor’s no tax increase spirit is willing, his progressive Democratic flesh is weak. Because taxing and spending are inextricably connected, the easiest way to drive up taxes by 10 percent is to increase spending by 10 percent. And the red ink, in progressive strategy, is little more than an inducement to impose a steeper progressive tax on greedy hedge fund managers living the life in Fairfield County.

The Real State of the State

Govern Dannel Malloy’s State of the State message gave little indication of his plans for the future. From a budgetary or strategic planning point of view, there wasn’t much “there” there, but the speech evidentially was framed for a national audience.

Everyone who has made a speech on any topic will tell you that the substance of a speech is determined in large part by the nature of your audience. One report indicated that the address was, compared with other state of the state addresses, a bit out of the box; other governors have used the occasion to map out a plan of governance for the new legislative session, and Mr. Malloy didn’t. On the other hand, he felt compelled to say something about Sandy Hook, a national and even international story. On Sandy Hook, he should be telling the legislature not to be precipitous; wait for the investigation to be completed. He may be doing that, but one never knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Does any of this indicate that Mr. Malloy is making himself available for a spot in Washington?

No one knows. My own crystal ball is in the shop for repairs, but there has been some speculation about Mr. Malloy’s political strategy during the current legislative session, which began on January 9.

During his first term, Mr. Malloy raised taxes massively. The progressive wing of his party, those in Connecticut who have a stake in ever increasing spending, cheered him on from the sidelines. When deficits repeatedly appeared, Mr. Malloy quite publically took the pledge: No new taxes. He said several times on the post-election stump he would not raise taxes to liquidate a deficit of about half a billion dollars. He didn’t.

During a special session called to address the deficit, renamed by Mr. Malloy “a shortfall, the governor reached out to Republican leaders he had earlier spurned when crafting his first budget. Together, along with majority Democrats in the General Assembly, across the board cuts were applied, but a much larger $2 billion deficit must be addressed this fiscal year. Additional cuts likely would not be possible without Republican support in the General Assembly. Some Republican leaders, following the special session cuts, appear to be quite willing to let bygones be bygones. Having been frozen out of the smoke filled back room during Mr. Malloy’s first term, Republican leaders in the general Assembly were exceedingly grateful the governor included them in the special session -- the chop, chop session. Democrats, most of whom would like to hold the line on spending cuts, appeared to be suffering from a pronounced case of agita. Did Mr. Malloy intend to stiff them in the new session, they may have wondered.

The Democrats whose nerves are frayed belong to the progressive wing of their party and are easily stampeded. We sometimes forget that the Democratic Party here in Connecticut does have a middle; it’s easy to forget --especially during the Malloy administration when, for the first time in more than 20 years, both houses of the General Assembly and the governor’s office have been claimed by Democrats. Contrary to media opinion, the Republican Party in the state is all middle. Here and there, a conservative or two – there cannot be more than a fist full in the General Assembly – opposes a post-Keynesian piece of foolishness and immediately the entire party is denounced by the state’s left of center media as dangerously ideological.

The reality is nearly the opposite. The capture by Democrats of the two houses of Connecticut tripartite government has given us the most progressive administration Connecticut has seen since former governor Wilber Cross hung up his spurs. It should be noted that the third branch of Connecticut’s government, the courts, always sensitive to political power, is also up for grabs. Only in comparison with the Malloy administration, acting in concert with dominant Democrats in the General Assembly, do middle of the road Republicans appear to be arch conservatives.

Since the modern conservative movement sprang pretty much fully grown from the brow of Bill Buckley, Connecticut has never elected to office a conservative governor or a conservative legislature. Indeed, the number of conservatives in the General Assembly can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

There is no question that Mr. Malloy is pro-union; also no question that unions, especially the powerful teachers’ unions, are left of center political goads that push individual Democrats far to the left. Yet, Mr. Malloy, courageously in the view of some, proposed a few education reforms that left an ashen taste in their mouths. To be sure, his most important education efforts went down to dusty death: Mr. Malloy’s apparently outsized ambition was to link the salary and status of teachers with measurable performance. In private business, that linkage is universal; in state and federal government, it is little more than a consummation devoutly to be wished. But it does say something about Mr. Malloy that he entered the fray at all. The left wing of the Democratic Party may have some reason – not much -- to be edgy. Of course, progressives, ever on the hut for new means of establishing their utopias, are by nature “on the edge.”

On the other hand… Mr. Malloy has positioned himself in such a way that Republicans may easily be faulted for any cuts in the upcoming budget which, strategically, would be to Mr. Malloy’s benefit.

Some people may have noticed that what is beneficial to status quo politicians does not always contribute to the greater good. Progressive influence peddlers interested in moving politics in Connecticut ever further to the left do not always have the greater good in mind; they have their own parochial interests in mind. The opposite of an ideological government is not, some may be surprised to learn, a non-ideological government. There is no such animal. The opposite of an ideological government is an anarchy of special interests, and no special interest spends more than a minute a month contemplating the greater good. When we see a politician buck powerful interest groups that surround him, there is some reason to rejoice. This happens usually because the politician feels in his soul the pull of an idea. In the absence of ideas, politics is a madhouse of interests.

Now, what is the controlling interest of a free floating politician? Maintaining his status. Under the skin, all incumbent politicians are conservatives; everyone wants to continue being what he has been. To accomplish this aim, the run of the mill politician will pay court to whatever special interests help him maintain what Aristotle called his “quiddity,” his “whatness,”his own essence, as he perceives it. There is some indication – slight, but some – that Mr. Malloy may have an idea or two sloshing around in his head, which means that he may not be wholly the plaything of special interests –reason enough for us to rejoice, moderately. Just as dying men sometime slip in and out of consciousness, so politicians, especially the pragmatic variety, slip in and out of ideas as advantageous circumstances dictate.

Could Mr. Malloy benefit politically by inviting Republicans to take part in upcoming budget negotiations?

Republican leaders seem very eager to “have a place at the table,” as politicians sometimes say. There are two questions: Why involve Republicans in budget negotiations this time around? And why do Republicans want to be involved in budget negotiations? The non-cynical answer to the second question is pretty straightforward. Republicans want to be involved for the same reason they wanted to be involved in previous budget negotiations; they want to leave their mark on the budget. Previously, they were locked out; a tax and spending spree followed. A budget – the national government hasn’t had one for four years – is a destiny-plan that marks the boundaries of the future. It also marks the limits of political power. What politician elected to represent his constituents would not want to be involved in mapping their future? Mr. Malloy froze out Republicans when producing his first budget because he needed a sizable, broad based tax increase, and Republicans wanted spending cuts. Without Republicans in the room, it was an easy matter for Mr. Malloy in negotiations with unions to strike a deal that then Senator Edith Prague characterized as so favorable to unions they would be insane to reject it. To this day, Malloyalists insist that Malloy’s spending cuts were sufficient. In his state of the state address Mr. Malloy said, “We came together and passed a balanced budget. We cut more than we added in new revenue.”

Three misrepresentations in a 17 word self-congratulatory pat on the back may be a record in political dissimulation. How Republicans in the audience, shown the door when he budget was being assembled by Mr. Malloy in concert with union representatives,must have winced at that “we.” The governor’s first budget very likely has never been in balance, and the notion that the Malloy administration cut more than it added in revenue doesn’t pass the “Do you think I was born yesterday?” test.

“It’s not true – nor did they reduce salaries” of state employees, said Sen. Rob Kane, the ranking Senate Republican member of the budget-writing appropriations committee.

Some editorial boards appear to be catching on. Here is a whiff of grapeshot from the Day of New London:

“Yet the governor now finds himself boxed in by some of the deals he struck to address the $3.5 billion deficit projection he inherited when elected in November 2010. The Democratic governor did win concessions from state labor unions, but they came at a hefty price. Workers in place when the concession deal was signed have been assured they will not be laid off. After a two-year pay freeze, the deal also provides state workers substantial pay raises in each of the next three fiscal years.”

Mr. Kane and other Republicans should be viewed as Mr. Malloy’s spending speed bumps – the spending “firewall,” preceding Republican governors, has entirely disappeared -- which is why Mr. Malloy did not involve Republican leaders in the General Assembly in constructing his first perpetually imbalanced budget. Mr. Malloy wanted to raise taxes and did; Republicans wanted effective and proportionate cuts in spending. Someone had to leave the room.

Will things be different in the New Year?

We have Mr. Malloy’s repeated avowals that he has no intention of raising taxes further. He will need Republican support to realize savings in his next budget. At some point, Mr. Malloy either will or will not cross the Rubicon and march on Rome. There are some indications that Mr. Malloy will not spare Municipalities this time around. When the head of the governor’s Office of Policy Management, Ben Barns, said offhandedly that cuts to municipalities would not be taken off the table in upcoming budget plans, members of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM), a body that represents the state’s municipal officials, began rending their garments and pouring ashes on their heads. That hint suggests the governor, this time around, might be serious about spending cuts. As they say in the news business– We’ll see.

And the real state of the state is?

Bordering on beggary. On the opening day of the legislative session, the Yankee Institute, a glowing candle in Connecticut’s dark night, took out full page advertisements in four major Connecticut newspapers. “We aren’t just doing worse than average, Executive Director of the Institute Fergus Cullen said, “We are doing theworst." Here is the Institute’s list of lasts.

Connecticut’s List of lasts

• Barron's rated Connecticut's debt situation as the worst in the country in 2012
• TopRetirements.com ranked Connecticut as the 2012 worst state for retirement
• The Institute for Truth in Accounting ranked Connecticut's financial status as the worst in the nation with a debt burden of $49,000 per taxpayer
• Connecticut's credit quality was ranked 50th in the nation by Conning Inc.'s State of the States Municipal Credit Research Report in 2012
• Connecticut's Tax Freedom Day of May 5, 2012 was the latest in the nation according to the Tax Foundation
• Connecticut's Achievement Gap is the worst in the nation according to the Connecticut Council for Education Reform
• The Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors by the Cato Institute gave Malloy an "F"

"On the first day of the Legislative Session,” said Mr. Cullen, “we are calling on the General Assembly to address the state's financial challenges by reducing spending and adopting pro-growth tax policies to move Connecticut from last to first."

It really is becoming difficult to keep the bad news under your hat.

Why Taxes Will Be Raised

A business reporter for a Hartford newspaper writes in an above the fold, front page story,“In An Era of Fiscal Crisis, Malloy Has Few Places To Run,” that “Malloy's budget chief issued a firm statement in writing: ‘The Governor will NOT propose tax increases as a solution to these challenges.’"

The “challenges” are a budget deficit in Governor Dannel Malloy’s first budget of $362 million, a figure that will escalate in coming weeks, and a future projected deficit of $960 million per year in each of the next three years. Connecticut’s total state debt – including pension fund debt of $60 billion and $20 billion in bonded debt –is the third highest debt per capita in the United States and represents about 40 percent of the state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The business reporter – and, indeed, most reporters in the state – was much impressed that Mr. Malloy’s budget hawk, Office of Policy Management chief Ben Barnes, had put the governor’s pledge in writing. And of course that imposing“NOT” in such visible caps strongly suggests Mr. Malloy’s strenuous aversion to tax increases. And yet, though reporters in the state now have in hand a WRITTEN pledge that the governor will NOT propose tax increases, many political watchers are riven with doubts.

If taxes are not increased, they reason, how will Mr. Malloy discharge such a large and imposing deficit?

None of the conditions to which Mr. Malloy has attributed the state’s metastasizing deficit – larger Medicaid payments, the continuing evisceration of the nation’s economy, the near certainty that all of Europe, with the possible exception of Germany, has entered a double dip recession – will change substantially within the next fiscal year. It took Connecticut a full ten years to recover the jobs lost in the preceding soft recession beginning in the early 1990’s; and the current recession – marked by increased government spending, higher taxes levied on entrepreneurial investment and the Dodd-Frank regulatory Octopussy – is certain to last longer.

In addition, Mr. Malloy seriously hobbled himself when he made in his first budget an offer to state union workers they could not refuse. In return for dubious saving, Mr. Malloy offered SEBAC, a union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts with the governor, salary raises of three percent each year nine years out, a dealcharacterized by retiring State Senator Edith Prague as one that unions would be nuts to reject. When the unions accepted the deal, they removed an important tool from the governor’s tool box. At this point, Mr. Malloy can only realize significant cost savings from state workers by abrogating contracts – not likely.

Such a move would require co-operation from a General Assembly dominated by progressive Democrats.

Indeed, discharging the bulk of the state’s continuing budget deficits, not to mention Connecticut’s alarming pension liability deficit, requires an internal assent from majority Democrats -- ideological prisoners of a progressive ideology that has failed most conspicuously in Europe --that likely will remain stillborn.

Would the “firm statement” issued by Mr. Barnes on Mr. Malloy’s behalf have presented a less firm commitment to spending reductions had Mr. Barnes chosen to emphasize a different word in Mr. Malloy’s categorical imperative: “The Governor will not PROPOSE tax increases as a solution to these challenges."

This rendering leaves open the possibility that progressive Democrats in the General Assembly, having rejected Mr. Malloy’s no-tax-increase intention for the upcoming special session called to liquidate the last fiscal year’s budget deficit, will then PROPOSE at some point tax increases designed to discharge an accumulative deficit of some $3 billion, give or take a few hundred millions, in the new fiscal year.

It has been said that Mr. Malloy will need Republican cooperation in the special session to enact savings that accomplish his intention –to discharge last fiscal year’s deficit without raising taxes. The governor’s intention with respect to the new fiscal year’s budget, which carries a much larger deficit, is usefully ambiguous.

Republicans in the General Assembly no doubt will recall they were unceremoniously stiffed in the earlier session that now has given birth to a $362 million deficit. Mr. Malloy did not need Republican good will to arrange his deficit producing first budget, which included the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, and Democrats were on the whole delighted to see Republicans playing the fool. Nor will the governor need Republican support in the creation of his second fiscal year budget, which may entail similar Potemkin Village savings and yet another massive tax increase. Republican leaders in the General Assembly should prepare now for the possible stiffing – before they negotiate with the governor to liquidate in special session the Democrat’s first imbalanced deficit ridden budget.

To do otherwise would be to play the fool most progressives in the dominant Democratic Party believe Republicans to be: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. There are some happy signs that voters, already stung by massive tax increases, will not during the next elections be inclined to suffer fools gladly.

Donovan, DeLuca And the Moral Obligations Of The General Assembly

Republican Senate Minority Leader John McKinney called upon Democratic Speaker of the House Chris Donovan to relinquish his position as Speaker following the arrest of his former finance chairman, Robert Braddock, for having concealed the identity of a donor, likely an FBI plant, who wanted to kill tax legislation on “roll your own” cigarette businesses in Connecticut.

Pointing to an affidavit used to secure the arrest of Mr. Braddock, Mr. Kinney said, “The facts and allegations in the affidavit are a grave violation of the public trust and cast a pall on all of the legislative activities Speaker Donovan has participated in since announcing his run for the U.S. Congress in the 5^th District,” a fairly damning assessment.

For his part, Mr. Donovan temporarily turned over the usufructs of his office to colleague Brendan Sharkey, who is expected to be appointed Speaker after Mr. Donovan’s term ends, and he has refused a call from one of his Democratic primary opponents, Dan Roberti, to step down as Speaker. After an exhilarating union rally in Hartford, Mr. Donovan pledged to carry forward his congressional campaign. Mr. Donovan’s defiance puts one in mind of former President Richard Nixon’s remark, even as Watergate was rising to his knees, that he was “not a crook.”

Two other Democratic congressional contenders vying for Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz and present U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, have made precious few comments concerning the arrest of Mr. Braddock and the possible political repercussions on Mr. Donovan’s bid for Mr. Murphy’s current seat. Mr. Donovan has refused, on the advice of his criminal lawyer, to answer any media questions that touch on Speakergate.

Governor Dannel Malloy nodded off after having called upon Mr. Donovan to make himself available for media interrogations; even God sometimes sleeps, thank God.

Mr. Malloy’s chief concern is to ensure the passage of the“roll your own” tax. After passing the tax increase to end all tax increases at the beginning of his term, the state budget – never in balance – once again is wading into the red, and more taxes are necessary to satisfy the ravenous appetite of the governor, the Democratic majority in the General Assembly and Mr. Malloy’s Malloyalists. Ben Barnes, the governor’s Office of Policy Management (OPM) chief, grows leaner and hungrier every day. The administration is depending upon Donovan factotum Brendan Sharkey, the Speaker’s handpicked replacement, to speed the plow during the upcoming special session, and he will not disappoint. Come Hell, high water or FBI investigations, Mr. Malloy will have his tax.

This is is not the first time the FBI had inflicted a sting operation on a member of the General Assembly. Only five years ago, Senator Lou DeLuca was forced to surrender his position in the General Assembly as leader of state Republicans after much ado about something was made concerning a domestic problem. While the Donovan mess has yet to mature, a comparison with the FBI sting operation that ensnared Mr. DeLuca is instructive.

An FBI agent, posing as a thug working for mob connected trash magnate James Galante, offered to“take care” of Mr. DeLuca’s son in law; in mob-speak, “take care of” and “bump off” are considered equivalent locutions. A Courant report at the time tells us: “On June 4, 2007, Senator DeLuca pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor threatening charge, received a suspended sentence, and was ordered to pay a fine. On June 12, 2007, DeLuca announced he would step down as leader of the Senate Republicans and was replaced by 28th District Senator John McKinney, son of late Congressman Stewart McKinney.”

Early in the DeLuca affair, Executive Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) Tom Swam urged the Senate to investigate Mr. DeLuca“to dispel public doubts and suspicions, according to a report in the Waterbury Republican American published on CCAG’s internet site. Mr. Swan, recently chosen by Mr. Donovan to replace his fired campaign director, had sensed a fatal hesitancy in the General Assembly: “I think there is a hesitancy to act." Mr. Swan wrote Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr. and Senate Minority Leader John McKinney asking them to appoint a bipartisan committee to look into the DeLuca affair.

Although Mr. DeLuca was yet under investigation by the FBI, the General Assembly began a hearing to nudge Mr. DeLuca from the Senate. The co-chairmen of the investigating committee were senators Martin Looney, now a Democratic Majority Leader, and Andrew Roraback, now the Republican Party nominee for the 5t5h District i8n the U.S. Congress. Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, tail spinning at the time into a full throated condemnation mode, made it plain that one of the purposes of the hearing would be to force the resignation of Mr. DeLuca:

“Because of Senator DeLuca’s unwillingness to do the right thing, Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams and Senate Minority Leader John McKinney had no choice but to call for the formation of this committee. I applaud both Sen. Williams and McKinney for creating a bi-partisan process for dealing with misconduct of its members.

“It’s unfortunate that Sen. DeLuca is making a bad situation worse by not resigning now. His actions will hit taxpayers in the wallet and further erode public trust in government officials, just as the state is preparing for municipal elections. DeLuca’s actions only increase the distrust and disgust many people have for their government and that results in, among other things, low voter turnout.”

Then Representative Edith Prague added her voice and prestige to the crowd insistantly calling for the resignation of Mr. DeLuca. This writer was among the first columnists to call for Mr. DeLuca’s resignation. The integrity of the Senate was the chief concern of the now retired Mrs. Prague. Mr. DeLuca, she insisted, should be questioned on oath by the Senate investigating committee to insure, under threat of perjury, that the senator would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth concerning his domestic affairs. The six member investigating committee, Mrs. Prague stressed, had been too patient with Mr. DeLuca:

“His resignation is absolutely required to maintain the integrity of the Senate. His testimony -- arguing whether it should be under oath or not under oath -- was absolutely outrageous. There should have been no question that his testimony and the questions and answers should be under oath. I was very upset watching that hearing, thinking what a mockery of the Senate and the bipartisan committee it was. ... I feel the committee is not being tough. Would he have that option in court? I don't think so. That man should resign from the Senate, and if he doesn't resign, we should expel him. If they don't vote to expel him, I will vote `no' on reprimand or censure.''

One cannot help but ask “Where is the sense of urgency in the Speakergate controversy?” Naturally, one would not expect a sense of urgency from Mr. Swan, who now finds himself on the staff of his old friend Mr. Donovan, but what of the other players in the General Assembly? Why has no one called for a hearing to investigate the corrupt and illegal activity swirling about the Speaker of the House?

Mrs. Prague’s strong moral voice is lost to the House now that she is no longer a member, but many of the other government officials who counseled Mr. DeLuca to leave office so that the honor of the General Assembly might be preserved are still walking the hallowed halls of the Capitol or running for re-election.

Is no one disturbed that a flaccid response from Democraticleaders in the General Assembly has anesthetized the moral outrage that should arise when a Speaker of the House is forced by an FBI inquiry to fire his arrested finance director, as well as aides identified in an affidavit as co-conspirators in a plot that besmirches the honor of the institution served by those who in the past rightly proceeded to call for a legislative hearing in a previous FBI investigation against Mr. DeLuca?

To be sure, it is important not to jump the gun. Mr. Donovan has not been advised that he is a target of an FBI investigation, the trip wire that did in the DeLuca case and should in very similar cases arouse the enmity of legislators concerned with the honor of the General Assembly.

Mr. McKinney has done well to call upon Mr. Donovan to surrender his position as Speaker. Others also have done so. Why has this seed fallen on such morally exhausted and parched ground?

While the FBI investigation is still in its larval stage, it is not too soon to demand that Mr. Donovan should leave his post as Speaker. Should Mr. Donovan decline to do so, the General Assembly is not without sanctions. The House especially might open a hearing so that members of the General Assembly may put questions to Mr. Donovan under oath – for precisely the reasons stated by Mrs. Prague. If under these circumstances Mr. Donavan’s lawyers advise him to avoid answering questions that may impact upon a possible criminal proceeding, he can avail himself of his Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer such questions on the grounds that any answer may incriminate him. For reasons that remain obscure, Mr. Donovan’s staff have brought dishonor upon every legislator in the General Assembly. The state legislature has a moral and institutional obligation to defend its own honor, and that defense, as was shown in the DeLuca case, need not wait upon the completion of the FBI’s case.

First Abolition, Then Commutation

The death penalty in Connecticut, after several previous attempts, was abolished today by the Senate in a 20-16 vote. The House is certain to pass the abolition bill, and Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to sign it into law. Senator Edith Prague, who voted in favor of abolition before she voted against it, this time voted to abolish the death penalty prospectively. A prospective rather than a retrospective abolition of the death penalty, it is said by proponents of abolition, will leave untouched the death sentences of eleven inmates awaiting execution on death row,.

After an emotional meeting with Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of a home invasion Cheshire in which two now convicted murderers took the lives of his wife and two daughters, Mrs. Prague famously said of one of the two murderers convicted and sentenced to death, “They should bypass the trial and take that second animal and hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street.”

But emotional responses, little more than convenient masks politicians sometimes put on to curry favor with voters, are evanescent. When the most recent bill abolishing the death penalty was presented to the general assembly, Mrs. Prague changed both her emotions and her vote.

The abolition of the death penalty raises the question of commutation for those awaiting punishment on death row. Unlike other states, commutations in Connecticut are parceled out by the legislature, not the governor. But it is always possible that an appellate court may strike down that provision in the abolition bill that preserves the death penalty for the 11 convicted murderers on Connecticut’s death row.

The possibility of commutation for the "Connecticut 11" was raised by Senator John McKinney prior to the vote in the General Assembly. Senator Prague allowed that discretion was decisive in judicial findings; for this reason, she said, it was essential that the abolition legislation must “make it very loud and very clear that this repeal cannot apply to anyone who is on death row.”

Mr. McKinney responded that even in the face of unambiguous language in the bill stipulating the abolition law is not intended to apply to inmates already sentenced to death, the courts would view the intent of congress clause as immaterial: “That’s a decision that will be decided in the courts. No one disputes that there will be a legal challenge brought by the public defender’s office and the weight of the legal experts is to say that a prospective death penalty won’t pass constitutional muster.”

The air in the small room, crowded with reporters during a media availability just prior to the Senate vote, was liberally sprinkled with the usual Democratic caucus propaganda. Reporters were addressed by the three vanguards of death penalty repeal – President of the Senate Don Williams, Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, Senator Eric Coleman, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, all three of them lawyers, and Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone. The irrepressible Mr. Coleman could not forbear mentioning that abolition was for him a matter of conscience, “even should it [the death penalty] be repealed prospectively,” leaving eleven prisoners facing death in the absence of a law mandating execution. The three were peppered with questions concerning the likelihood that appellate courts might void that portion of the bill that seeks to prevent abolition for the inmates facing execution.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, were he a member of the General Assembly, easily could explain why the abolition bill cherished by Democratic caucus leaders should have been applied retroactively.

Nulla poena sine lege– “Where there is no law, there is no transgression” – is a part of the Natural Law that informs all laws. When Mr. Johnson was reporting on debates in the House of Commons, he offered this gloss on the doctrine: “That where there is no law there is no transgression, is a maxim not only established by universal consent, but in itself evident and undeniable; and it is, Sir, surely no less certain that where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment.”

Any sound legal defense of prospective capital punishment collapsed upon repeal of the death penalty sanction: Where there is no law, there can be no transgression; where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment. That is the rule of law not simply in Connecticut; it is a part of the natural law written with a finger of fire in the hearts of just men, not excepting judges, though some are prone to political pressure adeptly applied by ambitious politicians.

Death penalty opponents have been in the habit of referring falsely to a just death penalty as “judicial murder.” Having voided the death penalty, what possible moral reason can be advanced to justify what should rightly be regarded as murder, plain and simple? No possible justification can be advanced that does not do violence both to the law and the moral sense of just men and women. The death penalty abolition bill as proposed – with its prospective feature – is political Babbitry of the worst kind, a fainthearted retreat from legislative responsibility. The Democratic General Assembly, having messed its pants with this ill proposed bill, will now expect the courts to wash its diapers and apply through judicial edict the retroactive feature it was too politically cowardly to attach to it.

Malloy Reforms Whipped

“After Governor Dannel Malloy is put through the political grinder by status quo opposition forces that tend to resist his educational reform, he just might begin to feel, perhaps for the first time in his political life, what some Republican governors before him may have felt when faced with an intractable opposition” –Connecticut Commentary, March 8

It was a bit like watching a baby seal being clubbed to death by hunters.

When the leaders of the Education Committee had finished stripping from Governor Dannel Malloy’s education proposals the principle elements of reform, the remaining limp carcass looked very much like a clubbed and skinned Harp Seal.

All the important legislative decisions that shaped the final product concerning the governor’s reforms were made, according to one news report, behind closed doors in a “marathon meeting [that] included the Education Committee co-chairs — Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, and Sen. Andrea Stillman, D-Waterford — along with Ojakian and representatives from the two teachers unions.” Mark Ojakian is the governor’s Chief of Staff and, along with Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Ben Barnes, a chief representative of the Malloy administration in its frequent negotiations with state unions.

The Education Committee refused to sign off on the governor’s measures to couple teacher salaries and tenure with student performance, choosing instead to study the measures further, thus packaging the Malloy reforms in dry ice. And later the budget writing committee paired back spending Mr. Malloy had proposed to turn around the state’s 12 poorest performing schools, gutting in half the $22.9 million he had assigned to do the job.

Following the evisceration of Mr. Malloy’s education reforms by the Education Committee, the governor sent a message to his Democratic comrades in the General Assembly expressing his displeasure.

President of the Connecticut American Federation of Teachers Sharon Palmer said the closed door meeting was held at an undisclosed Hartford office building to assure privacy from the prying eyes of Connecticut’s media, among others.

Among the “others” were Republican leaders not invited to the discussions, a sequestration that is becoming a hallmark of the Malloy administration. Republican leaders were also excluded, it will be recalled, from budget shaping negotiations involving leading progressive Democrats in the General Assembly -- which pre-approved an unfinished state budget before deliberations were concluded – gubernatorial factotums and union leaders representing SEBAC, a coalition of unions appointed to negotiate contracts with the Malloy administration.

Since the secret meeting was closed to objective scrutiny, the details later released by interested parties are subject to future verification and perhaps should be taken, as Mark Twain used to say, “with a ton of salt.”

According to information tendered by interested parties, the secret meeting on Saturday began at noon and continued until Sunday at 1:30. Those attending the private session disbursed when it became impossible to achieve agreement on “several particular concerns of teachers, including collective bargaining and labor management,” according to a news report, after which matters were referred to the Education Committee, which “re-worked” the bill, apparently to the satisfaction of teacher union representatives present at the undisclosed meeting.

Communications director for AFT Connecticut Eric Bailey said "Obviously, we think the bill was a lot better than it was when it started. The committee’s work of destruction yet incomplete, Mr. Bailey added, “but there is still room for improvement."

Other groups backing Mr. Malloy’s reforms -- ConnCAN, a pro-education reform group, the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, the Connecticut Association of Schools and the Connecticut Business and Industry Association – were understandably dashed.

"It's really hard to say this is reform and this is what's best when most of the voices were excluded," said, chief executive officer of ConnCAN Patrick Riccards. “The vast majority of stakeholders weren't part of the discussion."

As Mayor of Stamford, Mr. Malloy perhaps had grown use to issuing directives that were in short order applied by his administrative troops, some of whom he took into his administration when he became governor. But he ain’t in Kansas anymore. The General Assembly has for a long while been crowded with union dependent legislative leaders of committees who can easily frustrate gubernatorial designs that disappoint powerful unions.

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell points to a lapse in political acumen as the cause of the collapse of Mr. Malloy’s educational reforms. If the governor had linked his education reforms to “the biggest tax increase in state history, making the new money for the government class and government's many dependents conditional on serious reform -- no reform, no money,” his reforms might have survived committee clubbing.

But in budget deliberations with SEBAC, Mr. Malloy gave away the store. His factotums arranged a deal with state unions that was, according to union committed legislators such as Edith Prague, an offer unions would have been insane to refuse. When you have given up your principle bargaining chips to the house, further negotiations on other matters will leave you destitute.

One lives and learns.

Death Penalty Commutation

A decent time having elapsed, sort of, since two multiple murderers had been sentenced to death for having 1) beaten with a baseball bat a husband of a family in Cheshire, 2) forced the husband’s wife to travel to a bank to withdraw funds for the two murderers, 3) raped the wife and one of the daughters, 4) bound the daughters to their beds, 5) set fire to the house, murdering the daughters and their mother, anti-death penalty legislators in the General Assembly are planning once again to file a bill that would prospectively abolish the death penalty, replacing it with a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole. Prospective abolition would leave intact the 11) death penalty sentences of the murderers awaiting justice on Connecticut’s death row.

Such a bill would leave intact the legislature’s power to commute death penalty sentences to life in prison at any time after the General Assembly had abolished the death penalty. Unlike most states, the pardon power in Connecticut is invested in the legislature rather the governor’s office (McLaughlin v. Bronson, 206 Conn. 267 (1988), citing Palka v. Walker, 124 Conn. 121 (1938)). The General Assembly exercised this power until it created the Board of Pardons in 1883. Although the General Assembly had delegated its power of pardon to a board, it never-the-less retains pardon powers; and since the power to commute is considered a part of the pardon power (Attorney General’s Opinion 96-10, citing 59 Am.Jur.2d, Pardon and Parole § 23), it would appear that the legislature may commute death sentences, according to an Office of Legislative Research report.



The anti-death penalty legislators did succeed in passing an abolition bill during the administration of former Republican Governor Jodi Rell, but the governor disappointed them by vetoing it. Current Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to sign such a bill should it cross his desk. Encouraged by the governor’s pledge, anti-death penalty proponents in the General Assembly reintroduced their bill after Mr. Malloy’s installation as governor, an effort doomed by two key Democratic legislators one of whom, state Senator Edith Prague, withdrew her support for the measure after having had a conversation with Dr. William Petit, the father of the Cheshire murder victims.

At a time when a jury had convicted and sentenced to death only one of the two Cheshire murderers, the trial of the second murderer being in process, Mrs. Prague emerged from her conversation with Dr. Petit firmly convinced that both murderers should suffer the penalties prescribed for them by a jury of their peers. She expressed herself on this point in rather unforgiving language: “They should bypass the trial and take that second animal and hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street.” At the same time, Mrs. Prague indicated she might support future efforts to abolish the death penalty. But she found it difficult to look Dr. Petit in the face and “not give him something that would make his life a little easier.” The 86 year-old Mrs. Prague since then suffered a mild stroke but returned at the end of January to the General Assembly.

Democratic Senator Andrew Maynard of Stonington, meeting at the same time with Dr. Petit, followed Mrs. Prague’s lead. “It’s a toss-up,” he said, “I don’t support the death penalty broadly but I don’t support repealing it at this time. For my own personal reasons and as a matter of public policy, I don’t think it’s the right way for the state to act. But in this instance there are such mitigating circumstances, in my mind, that I could not in good conscience vote for repeal this year.” The mitigating circumstances having disappeared and the timing being better, Mr. Maynard now says “I’m inclined to support repeal.”

Even without the two wavering senators, there are, according to some head counters, enough votes in the General Assembly to pass the death penalty abolition bill.

The inevitable passage of the bill will unleash a flood of appeals that will at a minimum further delay the executions of Connecticut’s 11 death row inmates. It is almost certain that at some point in the future a Democratic dominated legislature supported by a Democratic governor, all of whom will have been instrumental in abolishing the death penalty, would be morally derelict in resisting the commutation of the death sentences of the 11 prisoners now awaiting execution on death row. The death penalty having been abolished for prospective criminals who in the future might violate Connecticut’s narrowly circumscribed rarely applied death sentence, no moral justification for the death penalty could withstand a call for the commutation of those awaiting execution authorized by a lapsed and outmoded law.

The State Of Malloy

There is no question that Governor Malloy shakes things up. But when the fizz settles, you find yourself holding the same old bottle of beer – only now it’s flat.

“The budget is everything to Malloy,” former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Curry told a New York Times reporter, after which Mr. Curry issued a timely warning: “The last thing you want is a sequel to a fiscal crisis.”

National Democrats could not produce a budget, even though they controlled both houses of the U.S. Congress and the White House. The day that President Barack Obama delivered his “State of the Union” address marked the thousandth day the nation had hobbled along without a budget.

The budget situation in Connecticut is not quite that bad. Both houses of the General Assembly have been controlled by Democrats for decades. During the last election, state Democrats captured the governor’s office for the first time in more than twenty years. Taking a page from former “Maverick” Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, Governor Malloy inaugurated the largest tax increase in state history, a record previously held by Mr. Weicker. The Malloyalists have said the budget is balanced, but voices in other rooms say “No.”

The expected “savings” in Mr. Malloy’s budget could not be verified by the state’ non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis on the day it was submitted for approval to the General Assembly. News outlets recently have reported that Connecticut is running a deficit following the largest tax increase in its history, but the prospective red ink has not tamed the inclination of Democrats to recklessly spend other people’s money. Even drunken sailors stop spending when they pass out on the curb; not so with the Democratic controlled General Assembly. Mr. Malloy’s budget prospectus includes more unaffordable Big Think spending.

Persistent critics of Mr. Malloy point out that he tied at least one of his busy hands behind his back in concluding a deal with unions in which current state workers agreed to a wage freeze for two years followed by three percent increases for nine years and a no-layoff pledge for four years, a sweetheart union deal that, given a faltering economy, easily could prompt Mr. Curry’s feared “sequel to Connecticut’s budget crisis.” Should Mr. Malloy feel the itch to cut spending on state employees’ salaries or woefully underfunded pension benefits, he will not be able to scratch it for nine years out. Indeed, Mr. Malloy’s revised Plan A budget deal is one of the reasons why Edith Prague – other than Speaker of the House and announced Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate Chris Donovan, perhaps the most ardent union supporter in the known universe – said during the unions-Malloy Kabuki contract negotiations that SEBAC union negotiators would be insane to reject Mr. Malloy’s more than generous offer.

Mr. Malloy’s first budget, pre-approved by the General Assembly before negotiations with unions had been completed, was deconstructed and reconstructed after contentious negotiations between the governor and SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the administrations’ budget handlers. In his “State of the State” address, Mr. Malloy mentioned his first budget as an instrument that had “bridged a $3.5 billion deficit, implemented Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and reached an agreement with our state’s public employees that will save taxpayers twenty one and a half billion dollars over the next 20 years.” Every proposition in that statement has been hotly disputed, but there was no mention of disputed budget figures in Mr. Malloy’s presentation the real subject of which was “me,” “myself” and “I”.

A current Office of Fiscal Analysis’ Overview of Governor Malloy’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget shows an increase in spending, an increase in taxes, a disappearing surplus, consolidations that produce no savings, a savings decrease and some confusing motion in the bottom line of the budget – none of which is uplifting. Here’s hoping the relevant legislative committees read the report.

Just for the record, Mr. Malloy mentioned the word “I” eighty nine times in his “State of the State” address. His more modest predecessor, former Governor Jodi Rell, mentioned the word “I” in her 2006 “State of the State” address 46 times. Former Governor John Rowland used the “I” word 14 times during his 2004 State of the State address. Former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, made use of the word 18 times in his 1993 State of the State address. No stranger to the word “I” -- Mr. Weicker auto-biography “Maverick” was reviewed by columnist and Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell under the title “Mr. Bluster Saves The World" -- has been known to overuse the first person singular in his philippics. It is no mean solipsistic accomplishment that Mr. Malloy has outstripped his most energetic predecessor by a perhaps unsurpassable margin.

The UConn Health Center Tar Patch

The University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) has for many years been Connecticut’s problem prodigal child.

The Democratic dominated General Assembly approved Governor Dannel Malloy’s then unbalanced budget the first week of May. And although it took two and a half months to finalize a budget that some still consider out of balance, the Malloy administration was never-the-less able to find nearly $1 billion to invest in a UCHC building program, not the first time the state has thrown money into the black hole in Farmington.

This year’s tax and spending budget allowed the administration to reap an artificial surplus of about $1 billion. Call it a make work for unions slush fund or a political hedge fund, the extra billion may be used much in the way that Tammany Hall of blessed memory used “walking around money” to purchase affection and votes.

Agents of the Malloy administration dickered for months with SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the state, in an attempt to realize temporary savings. A goodly portion of the savings will be temporary, because the two year wage freeze imposed on unions will give rise at its terminus to wage increases of three percent for the next three years, after which the governor will find himself in much the same union contract negotiation tar patch from which he has just now extricated himself, particularly if he feels the need to cut spending further as the state and country lopes in the direction of a double dip recession.

Mr. Malloy’s final budget plan let out the back door a series of pestilential problems that soon will be begging admittance at the front door.

All the indicators suggest that Connecticut’s debt will grow. The nation may be in even worse shape. The national government is spending nearly twice as much in excess of its revenue: Projected expenditure in 2011 is 3.77 trillion, while revenue is 2.15 trillion. The interest paid on national debt to creditors, mostly China, is enough to fund that nation’s entire military budget.

Here in Connecticut, debt cannot be diminished through tax increases paid out in expenditures and not applied to liquidating the state’s permanent debt. The nearly $1 billion artificial surplus built into the budget has given the Malloy administration the opportunity to engage in a much heralded jobs program. Much of the tax overcharge – that is what a surplus is – will be used to justify boondoggles like the UConn Health Center and the costly and destructive $573 million, $952 per inch busway make-work project from New Britain to Hartford.

The state also is laying itself open to bribery by Big Business. The money supplied by the Malloy administration to UBS and other Connecticut industries too large to be permitted to migrate to other states represents dollars taken from Main Street to support Wall Street. We may wait in vain for Republicans to characterize these giveaways as welfare for Big Business and Wall Street. One might ordinarily expect progressive Democrats to raise a howl about all this, but Governor Jodi Rell has left the building, and Mr. Malloy is considerably more progressive than “Snow White,” a name applied derisively to the governor’s presumed ineffective predecessor.

The UCHC has been given money to burn: $338 million in previously authorized bonds, $254 million in new bonding and $69 million from the health center. And even now, the bonfire crackles. Several months ago, the center was awarded what should have been a contract worth almost $1 billion. On a memorandum of understanding, rather than a solid contract, the center was selected to perform health services for the state’s prison system. Had the job been put out to bid, the medical work might have been done at a lesser cost. But the Malloy administration, as well as union facilitators in the General Assembly, is averse to privatization.

The latest scandal involves a union featherbedding arrangement facilitated by Karen Duffy Wallace, director of labor relations at the UConn Health Center, who sent to personnel at York an e-mail specifying that more cost effective per-diem nurses "should not exceed 2 shift[s] per week averaged over a 3 month period. This is so they do not replace a permanent bargaining unit employee and is something the Union traditionally wants. We get questioned periodically by 1199 when we are using per diems too much as it takes away from permanent bargaining unit members." Ms. Wallace’s salary, according to the Transparency.CT.Gov web site, was listed at $149,044 for the 2009-10 fiscal year, perhaps too much for someone who so readily falls into lockstep with union officials.

Republican leaders in the General Assembly – and, astoundingly, state Senator Edith Prague, considered friendly to union interests – have called for a congressional investigation.

The state Senate, with Mr. Malloy’s declared approval, earlier had passed a bill that would have cut costs considerably by excluding acquired overtime in pension calculations. Alas, “labor's trusted friend and lackey, Speaker Chris Donovan, refused to take up the bill in the House,” accordingto a Hartford Courant editorial, after which Mr. Malloy’s support of the bill collapsed. The new administration-labor agreement, Mr. Malloy now says, has supplanted the proposed legislative fix because pensions under the new agreement will be based on the last five years of earnings rather than, as before, on the top three years. That leaves, the paper noted, “45,000 employees whose pensions are calculated under the old system.”