Alan Calandro sits between two warring sides.
As director of the Connecticut Office of Fiscal Analysis, Calandro and his team estimate how much every piece of emerging legislation will cost the state to implement.
This means every time a proposed law — including the state budget — advances out of a General Assembly committee and is debated in either the House of the Senate, the numbers Calandro’s office put on it become the focal point of the legislation’s affordability conversation.
This precarious position means both Republicans and Democrats constantly call his office’s numbers into question, saying an over- or under-estimate can kill a proposed law.
“We have to be honest and non-partisan,” Calandro said. “They can count on us to give them information that is reliable.”
The 27-person staff analyzes the fiscal impact of 3,100 proposed bills during five-month legislative sessions and 2,500 bills during three-month legislative sessions.
One of the main OFA tasks is putting estimates on the proposed state budget every year. The office’s estimates on how much each line item will cost and how much each tax rate will collect determines what programs the state can implement and fund, as well as what the various tax rates will be.
“Despite all the stress and being caught in the middle of everything, you get to be right at the front lines when a law gets made,” Calandro said.
State Sen. Toni Harp (D-New Haven), co-chair of the Appropriations Committee that handles the state budget, said OFA helps the committee and the entire legislature understand the proposed governor’s budget and how each line item will impact Connecticut.
“They help us by going beneath the numbers of the governor’s budget,” Harp said. “They are basically our fiscal staff, and we can’t function without them.”
State Sen. John Fonfara (D-Hartford) said OFA has tremendous influence on what the legislature does, and the agency needs to do more comprehensive research on the impact of proposed laws.
“Despite what the perception of the public may be, legislators are very careful and cautious about increasing expenditures,” Fonfara said. “There is not enough independent analysis done of individual pieces of legislation.”
Fonfara said OFA relies too heavily on other state agencies to give estimates on the impact of a bill. Therefore, if an agency, such as the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, doesn’t care for a certain piece of legislation, it can give OFA an incredibly high cost of the bill.
“That can be a death knell to a bill. Many bills have died because of a lack of scrutiny,” Fonfara said. “That’s not what we need from the OFA, but that’s not what happens.”
Calandro said OFA is expected to be perfect in an imperfect circumstance. It is impossible to know how exactly a proposed law or a state budget will play out, and the OFA staff does the best job with the information it has.
“What I try to get people comfortable with is that we are estimating,” Calandro said. “The bigger the budget, the more question marks.”
Regardless of the estimate, OFA always will face criticism that it misjudged a bill, Calandro said, despite two- and four-year follow-ups to legislation that passed into law showing that the office is right in its estimate most of the time. Even when the estimate turns out to be far off the mark, OFA does the best possible with the information given at the original time.
“You are the one dealing with criticism for the work that you did, and you know whether you did a good job or not,” Calandro said. “You have to do the best that you can, but you can’t be shy about putting a number on it.”
Because the legislature is part-time and has limited staff, OFA serves as the research arm any time a legislator or staff member has an idea for a change in the law. With 187 members of the Connecticut General Assembly, the ideas flow freely.
“You are just putting out fires, putting out fires, putting out fires,” Calandro said. “These little parochial things take up time.”
Harp said Calandro is the perfect fit for an agency always caught in the middle. At OFA, staff members cannot participate in political campaigns, have signs or buttons supporting candidates, make or laugh at jokes about Republicans or Democrats, or sit too close to one legislator or another during a committee meeting or a full House or Senate session.
“He handles everything in a very non-partisan manner,” Harp said. “He has the right temperament for the job, and his staff feels very supported by him.”
Calandro was born in Bridgeport and grew up in Trumbull. He now lives in Burlington with his wife of 20 years, Roseann Calandro, and their daughters, 16-year-old Caroline and 11-year-old Laura.
The family decided to live in Burlington because it is an equal commute to Hartford and Simsbury, where Roseanne works. Alan Calandro said he prefers the more rural part of the state to the craziness of the Capitol and Hartford.
“I like quiet. I like trees. I like quiet,” Calandro said.
Calandro is a graduate of the University of Connecticut, where he got his business degree. He went to graduate school at William & Mary in Virginia for a degree in political science.
“I like business, and I like numbers,” Calandro said. “I didn’t necessarily see myself in the corporate world, but I liked public policy.”
Calandro worked as a business manager for Trumbull Home Builders before his public service career at the Connecticut Department of Social Services. He moved onto OFA in 1990, first as an intern. Calandro then worked his way up to the position of director, or “whipping boy,” as he calls it.