Is the long,
amicable honeymoon between Governor Dannel Malloy and Democratic leaders in the
General Assembly over? One report points to trouble in Eden.
Following a
Democratic majority caucus, Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey confided to
reporters that his people pointed a crooked finger of blame at Mr. Malloy for
raises that the University of Connecticut gave to non-teaching staff. The
raises were rescinded following a budget address given to the General Assembly
in which Mr. Malloy noticed, apparently for the first time, that a “new
reality” would henceforth require the General Assembly to pare back spending.
Like the near approach of execution in the morning, the prospect of elections
clears the mind wonderfully.
Seeking to meet the new reality, Mr. Malloy also has suspended $140 million in payments owed to acute-care hospitals, according to a report in CTMirror. Mr. Sharkey and President Pro Tem of the Senate Martin Looney feel the suspension of payments will unjustly affect hospital patients. Mr. Malloy feels that hospitals in Connecticut have been enjoying record profits. Why can they not survive with diminished payments from exhausted taxpayers? The optics, particularly in view of the upcoming elections, are not good: Progressives are supposed to be belaboring the greedy rich, not patients receiving acute care from kindly, overworked nurses and doctors. Really – what would Pope Frances do, not to mention his boss?
The hospital tax,
first levied in 2012, was supposed to have generated about $350-million, and the
funds were later to have been returned to hospitals as Medicaid payments. These
payments were not forthcoming, owing mostly to the continuing death spiral of
Connecticut’s economy. If the state fails to make payments this year, the
cumulative non-payments since 2012 will amount to more than $283 million, Elliott Joseph, the president and chief
executive officer of Hartford HealthCare, told The New Britain Herald: “This is a distressing development on two
fronts. First, of course, because it makes it increasingly difficult for us to
make investments in programs and services that benefit those we serve,
especially the most vulnerable. But also because it shows the enormity of
Connecticut’s continuing fiscal crisis.”
The outrage produced
by hospital short-sheeting on the part of Mr. Malloy was, Senator Joe Marley
said, bipartisan: “I think he expects the economy is going to come roaring back
and everything will be saved. We face enormous deficits and continuing to
squeeze the hospitals will not make that work. There is a pattern with this
administration of starving providers. What’s going to happen if we’re not
careful is they are going to start shutting down and then people will begin to
look for state services. If you push hospitals beyond the brink, you haven’t
solved a problem, you’ve created a new one.”
The Democratic
caucus in the State House agrees, according to Speaker Brendan Sharkey. Not only was Mr. Malloy’s autocratic
suspension of $140 million in payments owed to acute-care hospitals a smudge on
the escutcheon of the General Assembly, which earlier had restored funds to
beleaguered hospitals, Mr. Malloy was “negligent” in failing to direct his
appointed university trustees to negotiate a contract the administration views
as affordable. Mr. Sharkey’s caucus, one publication noted, “resented Malloy's
public demand that they reject the proposed UConn contract, which was withdrawn
by the university and union Friday in the face of its certain rejection by the
legislature.”
Mr. Sharkey fumed,
“It was only in the 11th hour when we were considering a vote that the governor
weighed in. I'd also hoped that if the governor has (sic) concerns about these
contracts that he step in a little bit earlier and not expect the legislature
to solve all these problems at the 11th hour."
Mr. Malloy had
upstaged a campaign gesture by Mr. Sharkey’s caucus to present themselves as
responsible budget cutters – months before an election! People who live and
breathe outside Hartford’s Capitol dome will find Mr. Sharkey’s mock outrage
amusing. This was the Democratic dominated General Assembly that, during Mr.
Malloy’s first term in office, conferred upon Mr. Malloy plenipotentiary powers
to alter a budget substantially, following contract negotiations with state
employee unions, without resubmitting the altered budget to Mr. Sharkey's caucus. The Democratic caucus was more than happy at the time to
surrender its constitutional responsibilities to the executive office so that
the fingerprints of its members would not appear on a
budget autocratically increased by Mr. Malloy, who said at the time he would
accept the bullet to save Mr. Sharkey the trouble of executing his
constitutional obligations. This was the Democratic General Assembly that had shown itself incapable of balancing through spending cuts ANY of their budgets during EVERY fiscal year of Mr. Malloy’s administration.
Current protestations
of wounded honor resemble the howlings of an insufferable moral paragon before
entering a bordello; when the door shuts behind him, one may be certain that neither
his ethics nor his honor nor his moral denunciations will suffer the least
diminishment.
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