Budget Mania
Photo by Steve Kotchko
Posted 5/19/09
Adjournment for the 2009 General Assembly session strikes at midnight June 3rd. For months, lawmakers and Republican Gov. Jodi Rell have been viewing that date as the deadline for reaching bipartisan agreement on a new two-year state budget plan and remedy for the multi-billion dollar state deficit spawned by the economic recession. Judging by comments this week from various leaders, it’s hard to find any notes of urgency.
Though Democrats and Republicans insisted to reporters that bipartisan budget negotiations were making slow but steady progress, no one was ready to say the end (i.e. a deal) was in sight. Instead they spent a lot of time criticizing each other for alleged intransigence.
Rell charged that Democrats refuse to see the importance of enacting more spending cuts to save money. The governor believes Democrats prefer to hike taxes to boost state revenues instead of trimming spending. “To be perfectly honest, I think they’re dragging their feet,” she said. The governor claims Democrats have yet to explain where they will find $220 million is so-called “couch cushion money”, unused funds in state government that can be “swept up” to help ease the deficit.
Democrats say it’s Rell who’s stalling. For months, Democratic leaders have charged that the governor used badly outdated deficit data to “balance” the budget plan she delivered to the legislature back in February. They say the lower overall deficit allowed her to present a “no new taxes” budget, burnishing her image as governor.
The Democrat-controlled money committees of the legislature churned out their own budget plan in early April that included tax hikes for corporations, wealthy residents, and some business functions now exempt from the sales tax.
“We’ve been waiting for the governor’s counter proposal,” said State Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams (D-Brooklyn), “but we still don’t have an agreement with the Governor on what the exact deficit will be.”
So there you have it. Apparently if Gov. Rell will just “confess” that she knows the deficit is larger than her original estimate, and if Democrats will simply “bite the bullet” and cut more state programs, there will be a deal, and peace will reign across the state. Don’t hold your breath on that scenario.
Despite pontificating from both sides on the importance of working together in this time of crisis, the last several months have been dominated by politics as usual, rather than profiles in courage.
Most officials prefer to take the diplomatic approach when asked if they can drop the partisanship and work out a budget agreement. Williams, Rell, and others involved in the budget talks claim their goal remains getting the job done by June 3rd.
The only note of candor in the crowd came from Sen. Dan Debicella (R-Shelton), the top ranking Republican on the budget-writing Appropriations Committee. “I don’t think it would be likely at this point that we would have an agreement by June 3rd,” he conceded. Debicella said it might be “possible” to strike a deal by June 30th, the end of the fiscal year, but he didn’t sound confident.
Many observers compare this year’s massive fiscal crisis to 1991, when the Democrat-controlled legislature and Independent Gov. Lowell Weicker were locked in a months-long tug-of-war over the budget and a state income tax to pay for it. The battle went past the end of the legislative session, past the July lst start of the new fiscal year, and into late August, before an income-tax based budget was signed into law.
If this year’s crisis can’t be resolved by June 3rd, the next deadline July lst carries many political problems. If there’s no budget by July lst, lawmakers would have to adopt so-called “continuing resolutions” to keep state government running without a formal budget in place.
Should that process become divisive, Gov. Rell might have to ponder shutting down certain non-essential elements of state government, or authorizing layoffs of state employees. The layoff option could be a problem after last week’s passage of a state employee labor concessions package. That deal with labor created a two-year “no layoff” guarantee for state workers.
Many observers compare this year’s massive fiscal crisis to 1991, when the Democrat-controlled legislature and Independent Gov. Lowell Weicker were locked in a months-long tug-of-war over the budget and a state income tax to pay for it. The battle went past the end of the legislative session, past the July lst start of the new fiscal year, and into late August, before an income-tax based budget was signed into law.
You’d figure those kinds of complications would persuade lawmakers and the governor to fire up a sense of urgency about reaching a budget accord, but we haven’t seen it yet.