Legislative Diversion?
UConn Basketball Coach Jim Calhoun
Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Posted 3/2/09
Lawmakers enjoy doing two things: making speeches and doing things (i.e. spending taxpayers’ dollars). This year, with a potential state deficit in the next two-year budget cycle pegged as high as $8 billion, any new legislative proposal with a price tag probably is doomed.
If lawmakers cannot spend money, what will they do? What will they do?
Judging by past experience, they will seek diversions. If there is pent-up frustration caused by the deficit crisis, lawmakers consciously or unconsciously may launch themselves into emotional floor debates and other actions over issues that don’t really involve new spending. Signs of this phenomenon were seen last week in the General Assembly.
While waiting into the evening for their leaders to iron out a $1.2 billion deficit reduction package for the current fiscal year behind closed doors, state House members became wrapped up in a hot debate over Linda McMahon, CEO of Stamford-based World Wrestling Entertainment (the WWE). Republican Gov. Jodi Rell nominated McMahon to a seat on the State Board of Education.
Several lawmakers questioned the appointment, noting that the WWE uses sex and violence to attract TV viewers, including young people. Was McMahon Rell’s best option for membership on the state school board?
State Rep. Shawn Johnston (D-Thompson) said WWE TV shows are filled with “hulking men” and “scantily-clad women” engaged in violence, apparently all sanctioned and promoted by McMahon and company. “You’re gonna sell this garbage and we’re gonna put you on the state school board?,” Johnson asked.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Andrew Fleischmann (D-West Hartford) claimed McMahon’s education credentials are “scant” at a time the state needs all the expertise it can find to improve the performance of schools. Fleischmann said McMahon’s TV programming showcased “outrageous behavior," while educators are hoping impressionable young people will “behave themselves” in the classroom.
However, McMahon had many supporters on both sides of the political aisle. State Rep. Mary Fritz (D-Wallingford) said the WWE CEO could become “the best thing that’s happened to the state school board” in years, predicting “she’ll shake things up in a positive way.” Republican House leader Lawrence Cafero of Norwalk called McMahon “a good decent woman” who should not be disqualified because of her business. Rhetorically, Cafero asked if the legislature would reject an attorney appointed to the school board just because he defended murderers in the courtroom.
In the end, McMahon’s appointment was approved by the House 96 to 45. The Senate previously OK’ed the nomination, so McMahon is all set.
The point here is that while legislative bigwigs haggled over the deficit package, lawmakers blew off some steam, releasing some political energy kept in check by the budget crisis.
Then there’s the flap over UConn basketball coach Jim Calhoun and his verbal one-on-one with media gadfly Ken Krayeske. You may recall Krayeske’s last big adventure, getting busted for trying to take a photo of Gov. Rell as she marched in her 2007 inaugural parade. Charges were later dropped.
This time Krayeske ruffled Calhoun’s feathers by asking if the coach, Connecticut’s highest-paid state employee, was prepared to give back part of his hefty salary as a money-saving gesture in the fiscal crisis. “Not a dime,” Calhoun said, before verbally lacing into Krayeske. The exchange occurred at a post-game press conference, so it was on TV videotape. The set-to set off a media frenzy in the state and eventually nationwide..
Once again, the temptation to get in some licks on a controversy that doesn’t involve new spending proved too great for some lawmakers. State Sen. Mary Ann Handley (D-Manchester) and State Rep. Roberta Willis (D-Salisbury) wrote a letter to UConn President Michael Hogan, asking that “the university take appropriate disciplinary action” against Calhoun. The two lawmakers said Calhoun’s salary and his benefit to the university miss the point. They said the nationally-recognized high-profile hoops coach “stands as an example for the students” and said Calhoun is “a role model for many athletes and students, and his behavior should reflect this position.”
Considering the number of state lawmakers sitting in “primo” seats at UConn basketball games, it is unlikely the House and Senate will be adopting any sanctions against Calhoun, but the Willis-Handley letter is another example of the emotional diversions lawmakers seek when fiscal woes prevent them from focusing on new initiatives.