Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s plan to scale back Connecticut’s bloated government to bridge a projected three-year $10 billion state general fund budget shortfall without raising income taxes is a step in the right direction.
The plan would cut more than 800 state jobs and close or merge 23 state agencies, reducing state spending by about $800 million a year. On the revenue side, the governor would drain the state’s $1.3 billion rainy day fund, count on billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds and raise numerous licensing fees.
But her efforts to trim the state’s inflated, unaffordable government will fall well short of balancing the budget, even assuming her optimistic revenue projections. The Office of Financial Analysis projects a deficit of $1.35 billion in fiscal 2009, $4 billion in fiscal 2010, $4.7 billion in fiscal 2011 and $4.8 billion in fiscal 2012.
The challenge facing the governor, the Legislature and the state labor unions is staggering, and taxpayers are fed up and angry. They are carefully watching the state’s leadership. Political posturing and rhetoric won’t be tolerated and will be remembered on the next election day.
Political leaders must address poor customer service and overhaul ineffective agencies so they do the job better with less funding. That doesn’t mean they need to slash and burn. It doesn’t give them license to sabotage the state’s future.
There is no good reason, for example, to kill consumer watchdogs, such as the Office of Consumer Counsel that keep public utilities in line by limiting rate hikes. That office, which is paid for by ratepayers not taxpayers, claims to have saved ratepayers about $2.5 billion in proposed rate hikes over the past five years. It should be kept.
But taxpayers also are demanding accountability and change. State leaders must ax agencies that do not provide measurable results.
Take the state Department of Children and Families, which has been unable to remove itself from federal court oversight since 1991. Now, 18 years later, DCF’s performance in caring for the state’s most vulnerable continues to be substandard. In fact, its stated goal is to meet all the needs of 80 percent of the children in the federal court review.
Any business that failed to meet the needs of 20 percent of its clients would require restructuring. Rell and the Legislature should not allow DCF to continue to operate at its current dismal level of effectiveness.
Then there is the Department of Correction, which Rell proposes to fund at $1.6 billion. The recidivism rate for criminals it handles ranges from 47 percent for those who have completed their sentence to 24 percent for those who transitioned into a halfway house.
About 20 years ago, incarceration was generally reserved for those who had committed violent crimes. But since 1986, the state’s inmate population has swelled from about 5,600 inmates to nearly 20,000, many of them low-level, nonviolent offenders. The state’s tough-on-crime mantra has created thousands of new inmates and done little to reduce recidivism.
Eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing laws would put the state’s correction system on firmer footing and put the brakes on skyrocketing prison costs. Today, taxpayers are increasingly skeptical that soaring prison budgets are making them any safer. Prison diversionary programs cost far less than prisons and are much more useful in reducing recidivism. Taxpayers win. Society wins. Inmates get on track.
Rell, the Democrat-controlled Connecticut General Assembly and state labor unions must now work together to create government that is effective and reasonable. The state can’t afford ineffective agencies, laws and policies that swell government spending, nor afford labor contracts that are out of line with private sector compensation.
State leaders must reinvent Connecticut government. If they do, they’ll create a lasting legacy.