The overarching story of the summer — and likely of 2011 — doesn’t really have a name yet.
It’s broader than the Tea Party or the debt-ceiling compromise. It encompasses more than Republican intransigence in Washington or the repeal of public employee bargaining rights in Wisconsin, both of which seem more like symptoms. So does the budget whacking going on in New York, by a Democratic governor, and in New Jersey, by a Republican governor.
The story has an international flavor too, in the “Arab Spring’’ revolutions, rioting in London and Athens, and in schemes to bail out various European states that overpromised and under delivered.
Some have portrayed it as an uprising of the middle class demanding to be heard; others have shaped it as an assault on a privileged yet unelected ruling class of public employees.
It’s all that and so much more. It’s shattered illusions meets ‘We’re not going to take it anymore’ from the film Network. And that is what makes finding a name so hard.
For our purposes here in Connecticut, the focus is squarely on the showdown over what Gov. Dannel Malloy says is a game-changing $1.6 billion package of concessions negotiated with state employee unions. It’s clear the state’s labor leaders want the deal, correctly recognizing it as generous when their peers around the country are faring much worse. And the wind currents seem to be blowing in favor of approval, under the oddly revised union rules.
But wait. What if, as the state’s Office of Financial Analysis warns, the deal is too labor-friendly and doesn’t deliver the desired $1.6 billion budget fix?
An interesting thing seems to be happening as the Malloy administration makes its way through this elaborate charade of a Plan B budget cut. They seem to be forcing agencies to do some analysis that reveals some cuts could and should be made on merit, not just because Team Malloy is scouring for spare change.
Such was the case with the closing of several state prisons, although that move is headed to court. Then there’s the curious case of the DMV cutbacks. First it was slash offices and positions; then it was wait until the re-vote. Now there are signs officials are questioning whether they really need to go back to ‘business as usual.’
That’s great news. The state needs to be looking for ways to help residents avoid visiting DMV offices for routine matters. And if a motorist has to drive an extra 10 miles to resolve a complex situation, is that really a hardship?
As private industry has proven, the new normal means questioning ‘business as usual’ and finding compromises that spread the pain. That sounds a lot like the service-side application of Malloy’s ‘shared sacrifice’ mantra.
A Rasmussen poll finds 67 percent of Americans favor spending cuts in all federal programs — including military, Social Security, Medicare. Perhaps Quinnipiac pollsters can see if those numbers hold in Connecticut and extend to state programs. We’ll bet it does.
That’s the kind of figure Malloy should consider as he plans his post-re-vote victory lap.
If the deal doesn’t yield the savings and he’s cut himself off from layoffs, he’s going to have to do more than just slow the increase in spending. He’s going to have to get creative with a hiring freeze and program cuts that start spiralling the state’s budget downward to a point where it becomes sustainable.
Naturally, that’s what we should have done in the first place. But if the light bulb goes on sooner rather than later, Malloy still has time to salvage both the mission and his governorship. If not — and he ends up as the guy who enacted the state’s largest tax hike, didn’t balance the budget and made the state employee unions immune to layoffs for four long years — he’ll go down as just another victim of the Great Malaise of 2011.
