Skip to main content

Donovan Says Nyet To Debate

President Pro Tem of the State Senate Don Williams said he was “strongly against” a move by Governor Jodi Rell to overturn an arbiter’s award to unionized prison guards that would provide them with a 3% wage increase. The increase for some workers could mount to 6.5% owing to annual increments and lump sum payments.

Williams believes union concessions may be needed in the future to close an expected budget deficit of $6 billion. Apparently, asking for contractual givebacks, according to Williams, would make the unions less amenable to concessions as Connecticut’s economy continues to tank.

William’s counterpart in the House, Speaker Chris Donovan, who has long labored in union vineyards, refused to say whether the House would debate the issue. “The unions didn’t create the problem,” Donovan told a reporter.

Maybe yes, maybe no. Donovan’s assertion is debatable. Deficits are caused by overspending, and in this regard Donovan is more responsible for them than the unions. What the Speaker is not saying is that unions, in part, may hold the cards for fixing the problem caused by Donovan and other free spenders in the legislature.

Is the Speaker really saying that he would not be willing to debate the issue because unions did not cause the deficit, even though everyone knows that the problem can only be solved if unions are willing to make concessions? That seems to be the guiding perception of William’s comment. Williams is afraid that contractual givebacks with jeopardize and future necessary concessions.

Why is Donovan unwilling to debate the issue in the legislature? And if a) it is inappropriate to ask unions to make concessions to ameliorate a situation for which they are not responsible, and b) unions are never responsible for state deficits, then it would never, at any point, be proper to ask unions to make concessions.

That is an argument perfectly proper for a union steward to make, even the truth of the statement were open to debate.

But Speaker Donovan is no longer a union representative – or is he?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p