Browse News by Topic

Data Products

Search Real Estate Records

To Do List

Printer Friendly Email This

POLITICAL PERSUASION

Putting It Off — Again

05/12/08

Twice in the last 20 years the Connecticut legislature has put off painful budget decisions until after an election only to hit the residents of the state with the hard truth afterward. The first big surprise came in 1991 with the imposition of the income tax. The second came in 2002 when massive state employee layoffs were used to try to bring the budget in balance.

We may very well be living through the third such occurrence now.

By agreeing to leave the second year of the state’s two-year budget as is, Gov. Rell and legislative Democrats have once again put off the painful decisions necessary to get the state’s fiscal house in order. Doing nothing in the face of growing economic pressures is irresponsible, but to make matters worse, this is the second year in a row Connecticut’s political leadership has chosen to look the other way as fiscal crisis approaches. They helped put us in this mess and now they’re refusing to clean it up until after this year’s elections.

If you go back to this time last year, you will find ample evidence that lawmakers knew the budget they were adopting was full of holes. Essentially, there was an agreement to spend more on new programs regardless of the lack of matching revenue. That fiscal hole was openly acknowledged. When questioned by the news media, the leadership said: “We know and we will fix it next year.”

Well, now it is next year, and the legislature has not only gone back on its promise to fix the budget, it has decided to stick its head in the sand as the problem gets worse.

The two-year budget cycle was adopted in 1991 as part of the compromise that led to the income tax. Despite this, the budget has been re-opened on an annual basis ever since, partly because legislative bodies tend to routinely put off tough decisions. It is standard practice to balance the first year of the budget first and worry about the second half a year later. As a result, we have a two-year budget in name only.

This bit of history helps to put in perspective just how irresponsible the current course is. It’s using the equivalent of a huge budget technicality to rationalize putting off tough decisions in an election year. Suddenly, after 17 years of ignoring the two-year budget cycle, it has been embraced by the governor and majority Democrats.

You can make a pretty convincing argument to make no changes in the second year of a two-year budget when times are good and the budget is in surplus. Theoretically, it’s a way to prevent the legislature from going on a spending spree — but not now.

The economy is not performing well — state revenues are down—and everyone knows there is a structural budget gap that needs to be addressed. To say that doing nothing in the face of these facts is bold, courageous leadership is like rushing to the scene of a fire and then retreating to watch it burn.

The fact is Connecticut’s deepening budget crisis can only be rectified with a combination of three forces: economic growth that drives up revenue to match spending, dramatic spending cuts, or tax increases. The first isn’t happening right now and the state’s political leadership has no stomach for the other two. That’s what this do-nothing budget is really about — avoiding responsibility.

It is disheartening to know that they have pulled this fast one on us before, gotten away with it and are now doing it once again with no shame.

Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is V.P. of Public Affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.