🔒Budget woes reveal broken legislative process

Connecticut's legislative process is broken.

If you hadn't figured that out yet based on the mounting red ink that is drowning the state budget legislators passed just a few months ago, State House Speaker Brendan Sharkey confirmed the notion when he recently admitted, according to published media reports, that the current budget process, in which policymakers rush passage of a spending plan during the waning hours of the legislative session, can lack transparency and lead to poor decision making.

Sharkey was particularly critical of a proposal passed by lawmakers earlier this year to raise the data-processing tax, a decision that was eventually repealed in a special session following major outcry from businesses. Sharkey called the tax hike a “bad idea,” and said legislators need to get more input from business leaders before they change tax policies.

That's a strong statement from one of the most powerful lawmakers in Hartford. Sharkey's sentiments speak to a disconnect between the business community and legislature that has long haunted the State Capitol, often resulting in anti-growth policies.

While we appreciate the candor, we must also point out that Sharkey is partially to blame for the broken legislative process. He is, after all, in charge of overseeing legislation passed out of the House chamber. We found it odd that Sharkey criticized the legislative body he oversees, while at the same time, according to the CT Mirror, trying to garner support for a third term as House Speaker. We wonder if it's time for new leadership.

Regardless, Sharkey's comments should bring to the forefront a larger conversation about Connecticut's legislative process, which completely failed the state this year.

Setting the budget is lawmakers' most important task and to foul it up as badly as they did in 2015 raises many questions about legislators' ability to fix Connecticut's fiscal crisis. Just last week, new revenue estimates from the Office of Fiscal Analysis showed the state faces more than $600 million in deficits over the next two years, and a $1.4 billion gap thereafter.

That, of course, is despite the fact that the legislature has passed two major tax hikes within the last five years. Admittedly, current policy leaders can't shoulder all the blame. Connecticut's fiscal morass comes from years, even decades of poor fiscal management and a Great Recession that devastated the local economy. However, we still lack a coherent strategy that will move Connecticut beyond its fiscal crisis.

Economic growth is Connecticut's only hope to reverse course, so business leaders must be at the bargaining table. Sharkey made his comments at the first meeting of the Commission on Economic Competitiveness, which was created this year to analyze the impact of tax policies on business and to promote pro-growth policies. The commission is a step in the right direction, but we've seen many blue-ribbon panels come and go without much influence. They key is not just discussing business-friendly policies, but actually enacting them into law.

We also question if a part-time legislature is up to the task of tackling the complicated issues Connecticut faces. It has proven difficult for even the most engaged policymakers to solve the state's fiscal mess, so how can we expect legislators who convene only a few months a year to do any better?

A smaller, professional and full-time legislative body may offer a better way.

At the very least, legislative leaders and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy must establish new deadline benchmarks for the budget-setting process to prevent the last-minute, closed-door negotiations that often lead to poor policy decisions. Without changing the legislative process, it's hard to see how we'll get different results in the future.