Governor Dannel Malloy’s brief flirtation with
Republican leaders in the Democrat dominated General Assembly is now officially
over. The engagement ring has been repossessed, and we are back to square one;
or, as Yogi Berry might put it, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
Shortly after Mr. Malloy agreed to accept the most
recent budget presented to him by chastened leaders in the General Assembly,
Republican House Minority Leader Themis Klarides expressed her
dismay in a Facebook posting: “Despite what they claim, the final
budget proposed by the Democrat majority does not include real structural
changes necessary to change the course of business in Connecticut. It simply
sets us up for tax increases after the elections in November.”
Her sentiments were echoed by Republican Minority Leader Len Fasano.
As usual, Republicans were cut out of the final budget negotiations between Mr. Malloy and
Democratic leaders in the General Assembly; in addition, the Malloy-Sharkey-Looney
budget was secured secreted in a lockbox, apparently to prevent
the public from participating in their democracy. House Speaker Brendan Sharkey and
President of the Senate Martin Looney have both been, during the
entire Malloy administration, the keepers of state budget secrets.
“Why do they continue not to let the public know what they
are doing? This is business as usual,” Mr. Fasano noted in a Facebook posting
six days after Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders announced agreement
on the tentative budget, once again elbowing Republicans from the negotiating
table.
Republicans had earlier shown their cards: the Ace of Spades
in the Republican deck was, and is, a structural reform that would, for the
first time in decades, offer a permanent fix to repetitive deficits.
Mr. Fasano was also skittish about this year’s
final implementer bill. Implementer bills in Connecticut have in the past been
the Pandora boxes of deceptive legislators. Strictly speaking, the implementer
bill is, as the title of the legislation indicates, a facilitating instrument
that provides necessary definitions and support that implement bills previously
vetted in public hearings.
By way of example, necessary definitions implementing the
Constitutional cap on spending that accompanied the Lowell Weicker Income
Tax Bill were never provided; the absence of the definitions were cited a
quarter of a century later by Attorney General George Jepsen, who
determined that the Constitutional Cap, minus the necessary definitions,
was inoperative. His predecessor, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal winked
at the missing definitions and determined the cap was operative as a statute
rather than a Constitutional provision. Because of Mr. Blumenthal’s wink
and the negligence of the General Assembly that failed to provide implementing
definitions way back in 1991, the state of Connecticut no
longer has a cap on spending. The laggard General Assembly may someday get
around to passing a legitimate Constitutional Cap – which was, legislators do
not wish to be reminded, the sine qua non that assured passage
of the income tax bill -- but the Democratic dominated legislature, still
struggling with a deficit sinkhole, is otherwise occupied for the moment in
passing a partisan, badly patched budget that may, legislators hope, be a
passable ticket-to-ride during the upcoming election season. We cannot too
often be reminded that Lincoln had in view powerful Machiavellian politicians
when he said it was possible to “fool all the people some of the time and some
of the people all of the time...”
In a one-party state, public hearings, dispensed when
provisions are artfully tucked into implementer bills, are more than
a nuisance. What is the point in having a one-party state, if you are not
prepared to abuse the public trust by short-circuiting public exposure? Tucked
into the lard of implementer bills – hundreds of pages long introduced at the
last moment of the legislative process that cannot be read by those called upon
to vote for the measures secreted in its pages – are all sorts of extraneous
goodies, many of which are included to obtain legislative assent to a budget.
It takes two ears to hear, two eyes to see, two feet to
walk, and two side of a brain to think. For his entire administration, Mr. Malloy and
the Democratic leaders of the General Assembly have stumbled along with one
ear, one eye, one foot, usually in its mouth, and half a brain. It’s time in
Connecticut to open government to Republican voices and even – dare I say it,
in deep blue-do-do Connecticut – to throttled conservative voices. Deja vue all
over again won’t cut it.
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