Rell Veto of Budget Stands, $337 Million Deficit Ongoing
Isn’t it odd that Monday passed with the whisper of pixels announcing that Connecticut once again failed to act on its budget deficit. Over at CTnewsjunkie.com, the doleful news was reported on, a pre-Christmas special session officially adjourned with no action.
Over in New York, Governor David Patterson has it right, he chided NY state lawmakers for running New York like a pay day loan operation.
In his State of the State address to the Legislature Wednesday, Patterson said “You have left me and other governors no choice. Whether it be by vetoes or delayed spending, I will not write bad checks, and we will not mortgage our children’s future.”
In New York the governor is a Democrat. He charged that New York lawmakers often yielded to special interests.
In CTnewsjunkies report:
House Speaker Chris Donovan, D-Meriden, held a 20-minute press conference afterward to talk about why the legislature’s Democratic majority proposed much smaller budget cuts and dismissed Rell’s much deeper budget cuts.
“We are saying that the governor’s cuts equal job cuts,” Donovan said. He said the cuts proposed in Rell’s deficit mitigation package would have cost the state 5,000 jobs.
“Why would you jeopardize 5,000 jobs in the state of Connecticut and instead favor a new tax break for wealthy estates?” Donovan said.
When she released her deficit mitigation plan in December Rell had proposed $116 million in cuts to social services and $84 million in municipal aid. The legislature’s Democratic majority proposed increasing the state’s revenue by more than $70 million by delaying the scheduled reduction in the estate tax. It also proposed cutting about $12.4 million from the General Fund and about $23.5 million from off-budget special accounts.
Laurence A. Tanner, president and CEO of the Hospital of Central Connecticut, said Monday that Rell’s proposed reductions would have cost the state’s 32 hospitals more than $80 million and 2,000 jobs. That reduction is “potentially catastrophic” Tanner said. For his hospital it means it could have lost $2.4 million in Medicaid funding, and at $40,000 a job that’s nearly 60 jobs, Tanner said.
Kinda intersting that it’s all about jobs that can’t be paid for unless we, ahem, and taking future revenue and counting it like it is spendable today.
“No longer are we going to run New York like a payday loan operation,” said Patterson. “We have got to find a procedure that cures the spending structure that has infected our budget process for the last 20 years.”
Yet isn’t Connecticut being run like a payday loan operation?
