The “concession” agreement fashioned between Governor Dannel
Malloy and SEBAC that recently was approved on a narrow partisan vote in the
Democrat dominated State House and Senate was, most people would agree,
beneficial to unions. The agreement was quickly adopted by rank and file state
employee union workers and, following its passage in the General Assembly,
union lobbyists vigorously cheered the union-favorable pact.
The concessions made by union negotiators during the secret
conclave were the usual give-backs made by union leaders in the past. In return
for temporary concessions – wage freezes that thawed after two years and increased
thereafter by 3.5 percent– the SEBAC deal was pushed out 5 years to 2027,
after which it might be re-negotiated or not. The two-year wage freeze was accepted
by unions in exchange for four years without layoffs. The putative concessions,
we are told, might save $1.57 billion over the next two fiscal years. However,
nagging problems persist.
In the near past, cost-saving union concessions had been
highly inflated. Presently, the state is staring in the face a $5 billion
biennial deficit which, minus concession savings, still leaves the state with a
deficit of $3.5 billion. Connecticut’s
bonds have been degraded by three major rating agencies. The state, endearingly
called by one commentator "poor little rich Connecticut," is losing entrepreneurial capital to high taxes and excessive regulation. Large
businesses that have sustained Connecticut’s reckless spending spree for years
are either bolting the state, putting themselves on the auction block, or developing plans to exit the state. Young people, tax
reservoirs for years to come, are leaving Connecticut. Hartford, the
state’s Capital City, has taken legal measures to declare bankruptcy.
Connecticut’s progressive governor, author of the two largest tax increases in state
history, has lame-ducked himself. And many reporters and commentators, late to
the mea culpa ceremony of innocence,
have only recently acknowledged that Connecticut has a spending problem and not,
as previously thought, a revenue problem.
The answer to a revenue problem, most of us know, is tax
increases. Been there, done that. The answer to a spending problem is
permanent, long term spending cuts, a much harder political row to hoe. In
Connecticut politics, the art of the possible becomes less possible as
effective possibilities are thrown in the ditch, along with Republican Party
budgets never considered by irredeemably progressive Democrat Party partisans.
Republican budget ideas have not been rejected by Democrats because they have
been tried and found wanting; they have been rejected – in fact, never given a
hearing in the General Assembly -- because it is feared that, if adopted, they
may successfully address the state’s chronic budget problems. One never fears
the failures of one’s political opponents – only their possible successes.
The Waterbury Republican American tells us in an editorial that Malloy, following the back room union deal, gave
the raspberries, as usual to Republicans: “The deal with SEBAC was opposed by
legislative Republicans, who favored making statutory changes to state-employee
benefits. In response, Gov. Malloy told News 8 WTNH, ‘This is a recipe for disaster
for the state of Connecticut brought to you by the same party, the Republicans,
who brought the first disaster, which was not properly funding the pensions.’
He was referring to Mr. Rowland and former Gov. M. Jodi Rell. Gov. Malloy
complained to the Daily Beast about Mr. Rowland signing a 1997 master agreement with SEBAC that protected
benefits for 20 years.”
Of course, the notion that Rowland and Rell are principally
responsible for raiding pension funds is at best a useful political fiction.
Getting and spending is, almost wholly, a legislative function, and pension
funds were from its beginning treated as a legislative slush fund. In fact, for
the first three decades of its existence, not a single thin dime was placed in
the “dedicated fund.” In Connecticut, politicians speak of “dedicated funds”
much in the way parents who do not wish to spoil Christmas for their children
speak of Santa Claus; both are joyous inventions.
In any case, Malloy struck an unintentionally comic note
when, after blaming Republican governors for having extended beyond their own
terms in office unaffordable pension agreements with unions, the state’s fourth
branch of government, Malloy promptly did what he had accused Rowland of
doing --passing on to weary and
blameless future governors and taxpayers the burdens of his office. Who needs
to pay bills for unaffordable union contracts when some future governor, poor
sop, is waiting in the wings to assume the heavy load?
By the end of his second term as governor, Malloy will be
free of his burden -- not so the state. Progressive Democrats have seen to it
that their iniquities will be passed on to children yet unborn, none of whom cast ballots in elections.
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