Short-lived try for transparency

Transparency, we hardly knew ye. Shortly after his inauguration on Jan. 5, Gov. Dannel Malloy issued his first executive order, calling for the establishment of an accurate and transparent accounting system for state government, just as he had promised in his campaign. There was no mistaking its importance to Malloy.But it’s not going to happen. Like past governors and legislatures, the Malloy Democrats have discovered they can’t produce a budget using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, known as GAAP. There’s the little matter of $1.35 or $1.5 billion, the amount GAAP would add to the projected deficit for the coming year. Honesty and transparency go just so far. So, welcome back, smoke and mirrors. Most voters had never heard of GAAP until Malloy clearly and repeatedly explained how it was the only honest way to account for their money. He told them GAAP would end an array of generally unacceptable accounting gimmicks that allowed past governors and legislatures to move current expenses into the future and use revenues received this year to balance the books from last year. That, Malloy said, wouldn’t do when he was governor. He would put a stop to it with all deliberate speed.Interestingly, one of the first political observers to predict GAAP wouldn’t happen was the disgraced former governor John Rowland. “GAAP will never see the light of day,” Rowland told his radio listeners just days after Malloy’s election last November. This prompted a quick phone call from the governor-elect to correct Rowland and promise “the state will go cold turkey” to reform its accounting. He didn’t say anything about keeping the turkey around until 2013.As a centerpiece of his campaign, GAAP probably helped Malloy get elected. I know that after 16 years of watching Republican governors and Democratic legislatures working together in the creation of phony budgets, I was impressed with Malloy’s promise of transparency, especially so when it became the first order of business of Jan. 5.“Executive Order No. 1 by his excellency Dannel P. Malloy,” issued on Inauguration Day, gave the Office of Management and Budget two months to adopt a plan for GAAP conversion, which, by my reckoning, should have been completed on or about March 5. But now there’s no hurry. Deep in the budget is language that allows the governor to postpone his promise of accounting reform to 2013 or maybe never. It all came down to whether the administration wanted honest accounting or more than a billion or so added to the deficit, which inflation will make larger by 2013. And so, after what I assume was prayer and reflection, it has been determined that conversion to GAAP would require “a level of sacrifice that wasn’t necessary,” said Benjamin Barnes, the director of the governor’s Office of Policy and Management. Sacrifice, yes, but not this much.The administration and legislative leadership were also shocked, yes shocked, to discover “there are financial managers in every state agency who have never operated under a GAAP environment. You have to train these people.” That’s the argument of Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Democratic member of the Appropriations Committee, who claims GAAP isn’t delayed, but merely undergoing an orderly implementation process. I guess we all misunderstood that this was something that was going to happen now. Voters can be so careless. In hindsight, candidate Malloy should have introduced GAAP to the voters as a concept he was interested in pursuing when he was in office. He could have presented it as a vision thing, something to be achieved once the more immediate need to deal with the deficit was accomplished. Malloy’s problem was making such a big deal of GAAP, convincing the citizenry it was so badly needed for good governing and then failing to deliver. It was a case of trying for too much, too soon. Leaders do that sometimes. Ask Barack Obama. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.