Politics & Government

Malloy on Final Passage of Budget: 'Not a Reason to Celebrate'

State lawmakers closed a $1.6 billion hole in the new fiscal year's budget early Friday morning by adopting an agreement that could see as many as 7,500 state workers eliminated.

A little less than two hours into the new fiscal year, and the state of Connecticut finally has a budget to finance it, as state lawmakers approved a plan to close a $1.6 billion hole in the governor’s $41.1 billion budget as part of a special legislative session at the state capitol in Hartford early Friday morning. The agreement could see as many as 7,500 state workers eliminated. 

The $1.6 billion gap was the result of a failed attempt by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to wrest that amount in concessions from the state’s more than 45,000 unionized employees. Due to the unions’ complex voting requirements, however, that deal fell apart late last week, even though a majority of the employees who voted did so in favor of the package, leaving the governor with what he said was no alternative but to lay off 1,000s of state employees.

The exact amount of the layoffs is still unclear, as Malloy had initially proposed to lay off 5,466 state workers, while also eliminating 1,000 unfilled positions from the budget. But the Hartford Courant reported Thursday that Democratic lawmakers in the state House and Senate balked at Malloy’s proposal to close the gap by also eliminating $54 million in state aid to towns and cities, prompting Malloy to propose additional layoffs of up to 1,000 more workers to close the gap almost entirely through employee contraction.

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In a statement released by his office immediately after the final adoption of the plan early Friday, Malloy said the budget was “balanced honestly, with no gimmicks.”

“To be clear, that’s not a reason to celebrate. The $1.6 billion deficit we just closed involves a lot of pain for a lot of people in the form of thousands of layoffs and deep spending cuts,” Malloy said. “But putting Connecticut on firm fiscal footing – which is what we’ve done – sends an important, much-needed message to the business community and to Wall Street. Now people will know we’re serious about getting our fiscal house in order, and now we can re-focus our attention on job creation.”

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The legislature declined to give Malloy the broad authority he sought to fill the budget gap partially through a two percent cut to municipal aid, which the governor would have had the discretion to determine, but did grant Malloy temporary and limited rescission powers in a 78-56 vote at 12:14 a.m. Friday morning, according to the Connecticut Mirror.

The Mirror reported that 10 Democrats in the House joined with all 46 Republicans in opposing the measure; while the Senate adopted the bill in a 21 to 14 vote at 2:29 a.m., effectively sending the final piece of the budget puzzle to Malloy for his signature.

“While I think the House should’ve taken up the labor reforms I proposed, I’m glad we’ve at least started the conversation in a real way,” Malloy said in a statement. “We need to make the relationship between the state and our employee base sustainable, something it currently is not. Whether through collective bargaining or the legislative process, or by some other means, this issue of how we compensate our state employees isn’t going away.”

Meanwhile, state union leaders have stopped just short of calling the concession package officially dead, as Matt O’Connor, a spokesman for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, that union leaders were still “hopeful that we can reach a quick resolution.”

Malloy said that state unions could still avoid the wholesale layoffs by ratifying his original agreement – but cautioned that time to do so was running short.

“If they choose to ratify the agreement that was recently turned down, and if they do so in a timely fashion, much of the pain that’s been inflicted over the past few days can be reversed,” Malloy said. “If they end up not ratifying the agreement, then the budget we now have in place is the one we’ll live with for the next two years.” 

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