Without political will, Connecticut will sink

From the state Capitol last week the message rang out loud and clear: Nowhere in state or municipal government can any more money be saved even as the state budget deficit grows by tens of millions of dollars each month and threatens state government with running out of cash next year just as California’s state government did this year.

First the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee held hearings to parade every hard-luck case in the state in front of the television cameras to plead against any reduction in their assistance. Then the Municipal Mandate Board just appointed by Gov. Rell to recommend reductions in state grants to cities and towns voted not to recommend anything. The only municipal official opposing the motion was Vernon Mayor Jason McCoy, who had specified many state mandates whose repeal would reduce municipal expenses.

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Just hours previously — and not noted by Connecticut’s news media or those in elective office — the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Labor Department had disclosed that state and local government employee compensation averages 45 percent more than private industry employee compensation.

While the BLS did not report data by state, given Connecticut’s nearly complete unionization of government workers, their advantage over the people who pay for them may be much greater, especially as private-sector unemployment has risen. As the taxpaying public’s income has collapsed, causing the collapse in state government’s income, all levels of government in Connecticut are still increasing employee compensation.

A complete disconnect between the government and the people who pay for it has been achieved.

Indeed, it appears that when, next week, at Gov. Rell’s call, the General Assembly convenes in special session to address the deficit, the leaders of the Democratic majority may either undertake to try to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for current expenses, thereby destroying the state’s bond rating if lenders can even be found, or simply abdicate and adjourn the special session immediately as if nothing can be done except to await financial collapse.

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Has anyone in the parade of pleaders before the Appropriations Committee ever complained to his state legislators about the raises and benefit increases paid to state and local government employees over the last decade as the public’s real income has declined?

Has anyone in the parade ever complained to his legislators about the vast unfunded liabilities of the state employee pension system?

Has anyone in the parade ever urged his legislators to review how much more drug criminalization or government-subsidized childbearing outside marriage Connecticut can afford?

Has anyone in the parade ever complained to his congressmen about the essentially infinite cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rescues of the bankrupt financial houses that devastated the world economy?

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Of course it is not really as if nothing can be done. The question is just whether the political will can be mustered to prevent society from collapsing under the weight of the government. There is a desperate emergency and there can be no more asking the permission of anyone to save the state. All statutory and regulatory impediments to saving money must be repealed or suspended so that the basic functions and humane institutions of government can continue to do what is essential through hard times.

Early this year Gov. Rell briefly acknowledged the necessity of suspending binding arbitration of public employee union contracts, though she did nothing to achieve it. The other day the Republican minority in the Legislature proposed that state agency budgets should be cut across the board. While this was something, it was thoughtless and ignored the statutory and regulatory changes necessary to saving serious money without doing unnecessary harm.

What state government needs to do is to become a price maker, not a price taker, to do what is being done throughout the private economy, to recognize that this is now a buyer’s market, not a seller’s market, to start dictating cost cuts to everyone receiving government funds while insisting that they provide the same level of service or be replaced.

The great objective must be to restore a relationship between the public’s income and the income of the government, its employees, its vendors and its dependents, to wrest control of the government from those who vote for a living and give it back to those who work for one.

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.