Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Superior Court judge James Graham today dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Roger Sherman Liberty Center that challenged the state budget on Constitutional grounds. The state Constitution requires a balanced budget. The center argued since expenditures exceeded revenue outlays when the budget was adopted by the general assembly, Governor Malloy’s Plan A budget was not in balance and therefore unconstitutional. It was the kind of judicial decision that attempts to square a circle. Only in a court of law is such an exercise not doomed to fail. There is no one in the state of Connecticut who can with any degree of certitude assert that the state budget is in balance – no one. When Associate Attorney General Perry Zinn-Rowthorn insisted during oral argument that the budget was in balance at its passage, he was simply doing his job. The budget is not in balance now; it was not in balance when the liberty center brought a suit calling upon the court to declare that the budget was not in...