Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

Dan Malloy, the Democratic Stamford mayor and gubernatorial explorer, was just up in the Capitol complex blasting Gov. Jodi Rell’s alleged neglect of the 300 non-profit providers who help half a million state residents cope with everything from mental illness to Alzheimer’s and autism.

Inevitably, the news conference steered to the current budget mess. “I think people in the state are tremendously frustrated,” he said, noting that Rell’s February budget proposal, which she called a balanced spending plan with no new taxes, was a conceit that was $2 billion in deficit.

“The damage done by that fallacy, the damage done by not starting with an honest discussion when it came to what the budget of the state of Connecticut needed to be to protect the services we provide is untold,” Malloy said.

 “I think there’s one person responsible for the negative, difficult turn that this discussion has taken,” Malloy said. “The one person in the state charged by the Constitution of the state of Connecticut to present a balanced budget at the beginning of the session, failed to live by the Constitution of the state of Connecticut.”

Blogster: So do you support the legislative Democrats’ proposal to raise $1.8 billion over the biennium.

Malloy: “I’ve been very clear that part of this solution has to be on the revenue-adjustment side and revenue adjustment substantially in excess of what the governor has called for and I think levied in a fairer way than what the governor has called for…. I will tell you this, the Democrats have it closer to right than the governor does and I predict if we ever are to have a budget in this state, that will be borne out….Democrats aren’t infallible, either….”

Blogster: So should couples who make over $600,000 pay $20 more a week in income taxes, mayor?

Malloy “….I think the reality is and I want to be very clear about this, that I think the Democrats are closer than the governor and I think the governor’s emphasis on the sin taxes is yet another gambit by a governor who began the discussion without speaking the truth when it came to the budget…”

Is that a yes or no?

A few hours later, Malloy sent this to the Blogster:

“I’ve been very clear that I support a more progressive income tax, especially if the alternative is unacceptable cuts that will hurt the neediest people in Connecticut, and irresponsible borrowing that will mortgage our future.  But I’m not going to play a numbers game.  If I say yes to $600,000, the next question is “what about $500,000”?  Then it’s $400,000.  And so on.  I support a more progressive income tax, and yes, I think asking people who are fortunate enough to have such high incomes to pay a little bit more — $15, 20 a week – is reasonable, given where we are and the problems we’re facing.  My guess is that most of those people would be willing to chip in to help out if they had any confidence that state government was being run in something resembling an efficient fashion.  Under this Governor, that’s not been the case.”

Records in the state Judicial Branch indicate that earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader John McKinney became the plaintiff in a marriage- dissolution case with his wife Megan. McKinney recently dropped his anticipated campaign for the Fourth Congressional District seat occupied by U.S. Rep. Jim Himes because he wanted to spend more time with his three children.

The Blogster will be celebrating the 18th anniversary of Connecticut’s personal income tax with a personal cookout and a trip or two to the fridge for the gin bottle within. Majority Democrats may look in the mirror and deny that despite the 114-37 majority in the House, there aren’t enough votes the Senate to override a potential veto on a Democratic budget. Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, more in-your-face than usual this morning during a rally masquerading as a news conference in the Capitol, went after Gov. Jodi Rell as if there may never be another session of closed-door negotiations.

“The reason why we don’t have a budget right now is because the Democrats refuse to make these cuts,” Donovan said of Rell’s budget-slashing plans on healthcare for the poor. “And we believe a fair, better way to balance the budget is to ask those who make over $500,000 tio kick in just a little bit, less than $20 a week.

“There’s a real pattern here that the governor is not only stopping healthcare reform, but is actually denying healthcare to people throughout the state,” Donovan said.  A reporter pointed out that Rell denied in a radio interview there was anything close to a bipartisan deal. “Baloney,” Donovan replied.

Ususally the term NIMBY (Not in my backyard) is the battle cry from the suburbs. But for the dozens of towns that are on the block in the proposed massive consolidation of probate courts, from the current 117 down to 50 under a proposal reviewed by a special commission today, it’s another word entirely.

The Blogster offers this: KIIMBY (Keep it in my backyard)

Imagine being Chris Healy, the state GOP chairman. His guys are down 114-37 in the House and 24-12 in the Senate. If he didn’t have a Republican governor, Healy’d be so marginalized, he’d literally be white space on the sides of a news release. On the other hand, with the passive-aggressive tyranny of the can’t-quite-pull-the-trigger Democrats, taxpayers need Healy to crank out screeds like the following, which just hit the Blogster’s e-mail. The headline is “State Burns While Democrats Fiddle.” It has a Hartford dateline on it, but in reality, the Republican State Central Committee recently moved its offices to New Britain. Also, his full name is not Healy Thursday. It’s just Healy, who seems to have released a bunch of pent-up rants.

Here it is:

HARTFORD – The Democratic leadership’s failure to honestly negotiate a budget deal months after it was due shows they are content to let Connecticut slip into the fiscal abyss, according to Republican State Party Chairman Chris Healy Thursday.

Yes, the embarrassment that is the so-called bipartisan budget talks of 2009 have been going nowhere fast, but the battling budgeteers are confabbing again in about a half hour, at 11 o’clokc this morning. The majority Democrats gave Republican Gov. Jodi Rell some food for thought yesterday and she ordered her staff to review the proposal. It’s up to the governor to blink, though, looking at that gap between her $400 million in new taxes and the Dems’ $1.8 billion. Somebody, anybody, needs to get this done.

The Blogster’s one of those people who believes the bipartisan agreement to bond the 2008-09 debt, which topped $900 million when the fiscal year ended June 30, was a stupid way to sweep Connecticut’s budding financial problems under the rug. For one thing it’ll cause such a lump in the carpet that lawmakers and the taxpayers who enable them will be tripping and falling.

But the Democrats were hell bent on using the $1.4-billion rainy day reserves and the $1.5-billion federal stimulus cash to get them through the two-year cycle that started July 1, so they didn’t want to raid that. The Ds have scheduled action toward the end of the month to officially vote on bonding the debt. No vote and the rainy day fund would automatically kick in to cover the shortfall. 

Since front-loading the debt has become the common wisdom – there’s a word – in the Capitol, the Blogster appreciates the warning that State Treasurer Denise Nappier has hoisted today like a flag high above the smoldering ruins of the failed budget talks.

“Despite high debt ratios, we have successfully maintained our strong rating by virtue of our reserves, per capita wealth, above-average retirement of debt and strong financial management practices,” Nappier wrote to lawmakers. “It is growing increaasingly difficult, however, to explain how the state can contemplate the issuance of deficit notes and other debt to balance the budget, depletion of the budget reserve fund, significant reliance on stimulus funds and other nonrecurring funds, and yet remain unable to pass a balanced budget.”

Nappier warns that if the state were to experience a downgrade in its credit rating, it could cost $80 million more this fiscal year in high interest rates and could take years to move back up the scale.

 ”It is my hope that awareness of these issues will help guide your deliberations in a manner that preseves the sound financial management practices that have served us in good stead and will lead to a budget that will serve the needs of Connecticut and its citizens over the next biennium and beyond,” she concluded.

Lost amid all the hoopla on Republican-based attempts to kill off President Obama’s healthcare reforms by rude, in-your-face blathering from Rush acolytes at various public meetings that members of Congress are holding this month and next, is a similar modus operandi by the left. The rightists want to simply disrupt these meetings so no progress toward reform is made, while the left believe that the president’s proposal isn’t radical enough, should be blown up and the whole issue brought back to square one, where they could push for single-payer universal healthcare.

This single-payer guerrilla tactic was underscored the other night on Bridgeport’s community radio station, WPKN 89.5 FM, when Scott Harris did an interview on the issue during his always informative - Monday night (8-10 p.m.) – public-affairs show, which the Blogster rarely misses.

Along those lines, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, has scheduled a public forum on healthcare in Norwalk on Wednesday, September 2 at 6:30 in the Norwalk Hospital Auditorium. So if there are fisticuffs among the dueling agendas, the injuried can immediately adjourn to the emergency room to compare injuries and insurance coverage.