Connecticut
Post posts about what is happening in the State of Connecticut.
Will Rell's Budget have Results Based Accountability?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 14:34At the 2007 annual meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Connecticut Joint Appropriations Committee and the State Office of Policy and Management was awarded the first Con Hogan award for “their achievements in considering how state spending affects key outcomes for Connecticut families and the environment.” This was due to their focus on “results based accountability”. With the large budget deficit, it will be interesting to see how well they do this year.
The initial indications are that it may be a rough battle for the appropriations committee to stay on task. Already Gov. Rell has gone on television poisoning the well by suggesting that anyone who doesn’t support her version of the budget is just a “special interest”. Meanwhile, she is being pilloried by some of these “special interests” as merely mimicking Pres. George H.W. Bush’s promise of no new taxes and suggesting that her focus on making government smaller is following down the same path as Grover Norquist’s goal of getting government down to the size that it can be drowned in a bathtub, the way it was in New Orleans.
Will Gov. Rell’s plan mimic that of Former President Bush? Will more costs need to be picked up by local governments, forcing them to raise taxes similar to the way Pres. Bush’s policies forced states, including Connecticut to raise taxes in 1989-1991?
Gov. Rell gave a good speech. She says she is seeking to avoid forcing municipalities to raise property taxes by not cutting Education Cost Sharing (ECS), by putting off unfunded mandates and by seeking regionalization.
Yet when you look at other cuts she is proposing you have to wonder if some of the cuts will actually end up costing the citizens of Connecticut more. As an example, according to Mark Pazniokas’s blog post Watchdogs Cut From Rell's Budget , Rell’s cut of watchdog groups in the government includes “The elimination of consumer counsel would remove an independent entity that often challenges utility rates, sometimes suing state rate-setters. “
Will the loss of such watchdog groups end up costing the taxpayers more than Rell is trying to save them? If we learned anything from the financial crisis on Wall Street which has precipitated much of the budget deficit, it is that we need strong watchdogs.
Now it is up to the legislature to sort out what the budget really should be. In her speech, she attacked people who would criticize her budget proposal. Then she went on to ask them to work with her. It seems to lack a basic understanding of interpersonal dynamics.
The award winning Connecticut Joint Appropriations Committee has a rough job in front of it. It needs to get past Gov. Rell’s divisive rhetoric and focus on what it has been recognizing for doing so well, “considering how state spending affects key outcomes for Connecticut families and the environment.” Let us hope that they look beyond the speeches and focus on “results based accountability”.
We, the citizens of Connecticut can have our say to. The proposed budget can be found on the Office of Policy and Management website. Be prepared, however, the budget in brief is 57 pages long and the whole is nearly 800 pages long. It will take a while to sort through all of it.
Can you change a school?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/02/2009 - 18:35The election is over as are the inauguration parties. It is time to roll up the shirtsleeves and get down to work. Sure, some people are busy focusing on the 2010 elections, but it does seem like there is a lot of work to be done before hand before we get too involved in those elections.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot at the local level. Yes, some of this may be driven by the fact that Woodbridge will have municipal elections in May, but even before that, there is much to be done. I’m on a committee discussing technology and education at my local school. We’ve been talking about the importance of improving Internet based communication between the school and the parents. Whenever these sort of discussions come around, I always talk about the how significant a factor parental involvement is in students’ success. One teacher noted that research shows that it improves not only the success of the students whose parents are involved, but also the success of all the students in the classroom. It seems like we should be encouraging more parental involvement.
Then, today, I read a blog post that really got my attention. The blogger started off, “I don’t want to change the world…just one little school.” He then proceeds to describe the situation with his children and ends off with,
I think next year might be the year I get off my butt and actually open my mouth and I am trying to figure out where to start.
I could talk about procrastination and about how people always think about doing something next year, but there is something much more striking. The person writing this is the author of the second highest rated education blog for 2008. He writes a great blog about his experiences as a teacher. So, why is it so hard for even a great writer about education to figure out how to get involved locally? Perhaps some of it because he has seen inside the educational system and recognizes the barriers to change.
Tomorrow evening, there will be an opportunity for citizens of Woodbridge to get more involved. Dr. Stella will be presenting the proposed 2009-2010 budget to the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance. It is a 1.8% increase over the previous year. A presentation about the budget is also available online.
So, today, I’ll focus on the local school budget. Do you know who is on your Board of Education? Have you been to a Board of Education meeting recently?
Sure, I expect we’ll have some people show up tomorrow. I suspect many will be concerned about keeping their property taxes low. In this economic climate, that is understandable. Hopefully, there will be others there that recognize the importance of a good educational system in keeping the property values up. Maybe, if we're lucky, there might even be someone thinking about greater issues, like are we doing the right things for our children and how are we preparing for the future.
Later, I hope to focus more on bills being presented in Hartford. With all of this, what I really want to focus on is how we get more people paying attention to local budgets and state legislation.
Partly, this is because it seems to me that just as students do better in schools where the parents are more involved, communities also do better where the citizens are more involved.
Budget Deficits, Patronage, and Symbolic Gestures
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/30/2009 - 13:35As Connecticut faces its worst budget deficit in years, blogs and newspapers are providing useful information and valuable places to discuss the deficit and how it can best be addressed. Topics that have gotten discussed have included legislative salaries, patronage, and corruption.
When the General Assembly discussed deficit mitigation, Reps. Cafero, Hamzy and Klarides proposed an amendment calling for a five percent reduction in salaries for members and officers of the General Assembly. During the discussion of the amendment, Rep. Hamzy pledged that if the amendment did not pass, he would contact the Comptroller’s office and take a voluntary pay cut.
The Comptroller’s officer reports that legislative salaries are handled by the Office of Legislative Management. A call to this office revealed that Rep. Hamzy has in fact followed through with his pledge. Rep. Tim Larson has asked for a voluntary ten percent reduction and Sen. DeFronzo has asked for a two percent cut. These are great symbolic gestures and I wish to particularly applaud Rep. Hamzy for following through with his pledge.
Yet as I noted in my blog post, Republican Efforts to Protect CT Dems Majority:
Rep. Hamzy, a partner at Hamzy and Conlin, a law firm which focuses on bankruptcy and divorce can probably afford the $1,500 pay cut much easier than his clients. Yet this gets to my concern about the effort. We need to make the job of State Legislator accessible to more people in Connecticut, including people like Rep. Hamzy’s clients, and not only to successful lawyers.
The issue of legislative pay grew as an issue when House Speaker Donovan announced plans to hirer for former House Speaker Amann for $120,000 which is over four times the salary of a typical State Representative in Connecticut. Amidst the outcry, former House Speaker Amann decided not to accept the position.
Yet this got the attention of various journalists around the state. Ken Dixon posted two articles about Legislative Staff Salaries. A little analysis provides some interesting information. The total legislative staff salary listed in Dixon’s first post is nearly $14 million and the average staffer makes around $65,000/yr which is over twice the salary of a typical State Representative.
On top of that, there are some particularly notable high salaries. Joseph Quinn, Jr. is the top paid Democrat followed by Douglas Whiting at $170,719 and $165,000 respectively. They are followed by Republicans Paul Pimentel and George Gallo at $151,000 and $149,000 respectively. George Gallo is the former chair of the State Republican Party.
Coming in fifth and sixth are Democrat Kevin Graff and Republican Deborah L. Hutton at $147,160 and $144,000 respectively. Various websites make reference to a Deb or Deborah Hutton who had been listed as a VP of Government Affairs for Cablevision and Treasurer of Cablevision Systems Connecticut Political Committee back in about 2006. I do not know if this is the same Deborah Hutton, but I suspect it may be.
In addition to the annual salaries listed, Mr. Dixon posted another article listing Sessional Employees. This works out to be another $13,000 for each day that the General Assembly is in session. The average is a little over a hundred dollars a day, however there are some larger numbers with Robert Frankel leading the list at nearly $700/day.
Should any of these people be considering paycuts? Do we have concerns about their roles in the legislative process given their backgrounds? Is there political patronage going on here?
Chris Powell, managing editor at the Journal Inquirer approaches this from an interesting perspective. He suggest that Patronage is problem only if taken too far.
Amann notes that candidacy for major office imposes great personal financial burdens. These burdens discourage many good candidates, and Connecticut's new system of public financing for political campaigns does nothing about it. Indeed, promising as it is, the public-financing system may fail to achieve one of its objectives -- more competitive elections -- unless more people can afford to become candidates. That's why it might be good to extend the public-financing system to pay salaries to candidates who are challenging incumbents and who are not already on the public payroll themselves, or to allow such challenge candidates who have qualified for public financing to draw reasonable and temporary salaries from their campaigns.
I suspect that in the current fiscal climate, this idea isn’t likely to go very far, but it gets to the core of the problem. How do we get the best possible people to run for office?
The importance of this is underscored other recent events. Yesterday, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was removed from office for, among other things, plotting to “sign legislation related to the horse racing industry”, “award a tollway contract and expand a tollway project”, “release pediatric care reimbursements to Illinois doctors and hospitals”, “appoint someone to the Illinois Finance Authority”, “award state contracts in exchange” and “award permits and authorizations” all “in exchange for campaign contributions”.
While the Citizens’ Election Program would have eliminated half of the charges against former Gov. Blagojevich, he still would most likely have been impeached on other charges.
Public financing of elections, in and of itself, will reduce some of the opportunities for corrupt politicians to act corruptly, but it won’t eliminate corruption. Instead, the key goal of public financing of elections, at least as I see it, is to help give voters better choices for candidates.
This leads me to the discussion on Connecticut Local Politics about the arrest of Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez on charges of bribery and fabricating evidence. I should note that the article was written by my wife, Kim Hynes, who is a senior organizer for Common Cause.
People who oppose public financing of elections were quick to jump on the discussion arguing that if we had public financing of elections, Rowland and Perez probably would have been elected anyway. Their conjecture might be true. Making it easier for better, non-corrupt politicians to run doesn’t guarantee that non-corrupt politicians will always, in the end, get elected.
One person suggested that “Elected officials are always accountable to voters”. Well, that is true, if they are facing meaningful opposition in elections. However, a corrupt incumbent that goes unopposed will most likely win re-election, and when a corrupt incumbent faces a corrupt challenger, you can be pretty sure that the winner will be corrupt.
The cost of corruption can be very high. So, as we try to reduce governmental costs, the question remains, how do we reduce corruption in government? Public financing of elections reduces one avenue of corruption. It makes it easier for better candidates to run. Should candidates collect salaries while they run? Should legislators be paid better so that more people can afford to take a state legislative job? Where does civic education fit into the equation, and where does the media fit in?
Here in Connecticut, it is good to see newspaper editors and bloggers grappling with these questions. It’s a good start.
Bills before the Government Administrations and Elections Committee
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 01/25/2009 - 23:20Yesterday, I wrote a blog post looking at some of the bills that the Education Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly is considering this year. Today, I went with Kim to a meeting of political activists and thought I should look to see what bills the Government Administrations and Elections (GAE) Committee is considering.
Before I go to far into this, I want to note a few things. Kim works for Common Cause as a senior organizer and as such is a paid lobbyist on their behalf. Common Cause “remains committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy.” As such, they have a keen interest in many of the bills before the GAE.
I, too, have a keen interest in encouraging citizen participation and I suspect that in many cases my views are likely to be similar to those of Kim and of Common Cause, but I want to make it clear that these are my personal views.
With that in mind, let’s look at some of the bills and my thoughts about whether or not they encourage citizen participation.
Education Bills before the Connecticut General Assembly
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 22:05As the 2009 Session of the Connecticut General Assembly proceeds, there are now nearly fifty education bills proposed in the Senate and nearly one hundred such bills proposed in the House. While only a small number of bills ever see the light of day, I thought it might be interesting to look at some of these bills.
I have broken bills into my views about appropriate sections and added my commentary on the bills. I’ve only gotten through about three quarters of the Senate bills, and this has gotten to be very long. However, I hope this is interesting and will get others to think about bills before their state legislatures.
(Categories: )
