The late Everret Dirksen is credited with uttering the ultimate wisdom on federal budgeting: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”
One can only speculate what the Illinois senator would make of Connecticut these days.
There’s the hole in the state budget where a projected $9.4 million was supposed to flow from the so-called Amazon tax. It’s not coming and, as Greg Bordonaro reports on this week’s front page, the affiliate marketers are getting killed, just as they’d projected. It amounts to a small rounding error in a $20.14 billion state budget; it just points out the folks on the ground are better at projections.
There are lots more zeroes in Ben Barnes’ calculation that the state started the year $71 billion in debt. That covers all the capital projects and promises. And that makes Connecticut among the most debt-riddled jurisdictions in the nation on a per-capita basis. But, the secretary of the Office of Policy Management is quick to point out, things aren’t getting worse on his watch.
That may be true, unless you pay attention to the sound of the clock ticking on the state’s pension-liability bomb. The state has about 45 percent of its $21 billion-plus liability covered; the beancounters say 80 percent is necessary.
There’s no quibble with paying for capital projects over time, like a home mortgage. But the pension funding mess has existed for more than 20 years and is only getting worse. Gov. John Rowland found himself in such a bind that he agreed to a scheme that reduced payments during his time in office and escalated the burden on some still unidentified victims who will hold office in 2020 and beyond.
The pension situation, Barnes told a recent meeting of the legislative finance committee, “gets spectacularly ugly” in the out years. The choices seem to boil down to pay more now or pay even more later — again.
For his part, Gov. Dannel Malloy has contributed to the mess by closing off one of the few exit ramps. In his concession deal with state employee unions, he gave away the state’s right to renegotiate benefits through 2022. So the cost side of the equation will keep building at least that long.
Of course, there’s also the continuing riddle posed by the legislature’s non-partisan Office of Financial Analysis, which has been saying for months it can neither see nor track the $700 million in savings the Malloy administration is counting on from that new labor agreement. That’s the money that’s central to balancing this year’s state’s budget.
Recall this is the governor who promised there’d be no smoke and mirrors in his budgeting.
Team Malloy gets credit for at least trying to get a handle on the magnitude of the state’s budget crisis. But, faced with the enormity of the hole that needs to be filled — and the political consequences of advocating the level of budgetary restraint necessary — it’s not surprising that nobody is eager to recommend a next step.
So here we sit, hoping the feds solve the Amazon tax issue, hoping the economy rebounds, hoping the postman brings more tax payments and hoping somebody else is in charge when it all hits the fan.
That’s not a recipe for good government. For that, Senator Dirksen had another saying:
“Economy is an old-fashioned thing. It savors of horse and buggy days. I am only too glad, however, to say a few words in behalf of economy, for in economy, in frugality, and in the thrift of our Government I think we shall ultimately find ourselves and our salvation.”
