Political Capitol

According to Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, a co-chairman of the legislature’s Banks Committee, the group is trying to schedule a hearing for next Friday to gauge the full impact of the Bernard Madoff investing scam on Connecticut.

Fairfield was particularly hit.

Besides Duff, the Banks Committee’s membership includes Rep. John Stripp, R-Weston, who is the ranking Republican.

There are announcements Governors make during a budget crisis that SOUND like a big deal.

Ordering hiring freezes, banning out of state travel, taking away workers’ vehicles, offering early retirement to avoid layoffs, consolidating departments, canceling state contracts.

Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has done all of the above over the past few months as the state’s deficit has grown to $8 billion. And regardless of the details or the merits of the proposals, it’s safe to say at first blush taxpayers are likely to think “wow, that sure sounds like the Governor is really trying to reign in spending.”

So this weekend morning’s press release from Rell was entitled “Governor Announces Order to Eliminate Boards and Commissions.” And it’s “here she goes again with the budget axe” eye-catching. We get dramatic words like “executive order,” “shrinking government,” “reducing costs” PLUS a quote from Rell about how “tough economic times are when new ideas and approaches matter most.”

But then I took a look at the complete list of cuts: The Governor’s Committee on Physical Fitness, the Advisory Commission on American and Francophone (French-speaking countries) Cultural Affairs, the Governor’s Competitiveness Council, the Governor’s Small Business Advisory Council, the Governor’s Identity Theft Advisory Board, the Governor’s Early Childhood Research and Policy Council, the Buckland Area Transportation Study Advisory Committee, and the Connecticut Economic Resource Center Board.

Admittedly – and nothing against the French – a few of those actually made me chuckle. But okay, those dealing with kids and business sound like a big deal. And I actually did have a wallet stolen a few years ago so identity theft has been a concern. I’ll give the Governor the benefit of the doubt that this all means something significant.

So the next obvious question is – how much money will this save? I e-mail Rell spokesman Christopher Cooper, who sent out the release.

His reply: “No estimate on savings.”

So if you EVER wonder why reporters can be so cynical about government and particularly press releases from lawmakers, remember this story.

If I were Governor Rell I would be VERY UPSET right now that my advisors talked me into blowing the “tough economic times are when new ideas and approaches matter most” line on this announcement.

… he’s not a big fan of Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s suggested approach.

Rell in her budget address earlier this month proposed merging the state’s Community College system and the Technical School System into a new animal called a Middle College System.

The decision was initially hailed by Stamford’s Democratic legislators who, with Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele, have been working for a few months to keep the state from closing Wright Tech. In fact Rell’s budget proposal cites a proposed merger between Wright and Norwalk Community College as a model for the Middle College concept, intended to better prepare high school students for the community college experience and the workforce.

But Sen. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, a co-chairman of the legislature’s Education Committee, said in an interview today he is not a fan of Rell’s Middle College strategy.

“I have very serious concerns,” Fleischmann said. “The concept of a Middle College system is powerful. Executed properly it can do great things for students.”

But Fleischmann is worried Rell’s proposal lacks important nuances and is essentially an effort to “mash” the Techinical Schools and Community Colleges together “and call it a middle college.”

He said the Wright/NCC project alone will result in what he considers “major” budget cuts to the latter.

“I’m totally open to figuring out how we can have Wright partnering with NCC for a seamless transition from high school to college,” Fleischmann said. “I’ve spent a lot of hours talking with members of the Stamford delegation about Wright Tech.”

The proposal is bound to be a hot topic Monday when NCC hosts its annual legislative breakfast at 8 a.m.

New Senator/former Rep. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton and Rep. John Hetherington, R-New Canaan, have scheduled a public budget forum for March 1, 12 noon to 2 p.m., at Wilton Public Library.

The event has been titled “How We Got Here and Where Do We Go From Here?”

Boucher is a member of the legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. Hetherington sits on the Appropriations Committee.

Boucher in a brief interview said she intends to invite Democratic lawmakers from the area as well so there can be a lively bi-partisan discussion about the best approach to addressing the state’s growing deficit.

“I want all of us to hear from the public,” Boucher said.

It will be interesting to see which Democrats show up and how they address questions about using tax increases to help plug the budget hole, since there’s a feeling in Hartford they want to do it but are doing everything to avoid talking about the issue. Rell’s budget proposal does not raise taxes.

I’m also curious if there will be any sparring over the actual size of the deficit. Dems are complaining Rell purposely low-balled it by a few billion dollars so she didn’t have to propose tax hikes.

If you’re curious about what’s going on at the capitol and where people stand on the deficit, it’s bound to be an interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

“This is an historic period,” Boucher said, referring to the economic crisis in the state and nationwide. “I’m actually losing some sleep over it. It’s bothering me a lot.”

So a colleague today e-mailed me a copy of recently retired state Rep. John Ryan’s most recent column from a weekly newspaper in his hometown of Darien.

It’s called “From Hartford to Here” and apparently Ryan has decided that although he retired from the General Assembly his former constituents will still benefit from his decidedly-Republican perspective of the goings-on in the legislature.

This column is about the quality of capitol coverage in state newspapers.

“Our local daily papers are not much  help,” Ryan writes, and he is none too complimentary of yours truly.

“The Advocate does have a Capitol reporter (Brian Lockhart) and occasional coverage, but not much real insight,” Ryan writes. “So where to go ?”

I’ll tell you where to go, John…

C’mon man! I thought we had something! I mean, you were impossibly hard to reach and never made any effort to communicate what you might have been working on during your tenure in the General Assembly. But still, we had some fun, didn’t we? I’d approach you at the capitol. You’d make cynical jokes about the lousy job reporters do, tell me to read your column, and then I’d try and get a quote from you so your constituents would have a general idea what the guy they kept electing was actually doing in Hartford. Remember? I’d drive home and take a hot shower to scrub off your sarcasm. Good times.

But calling me out in your column? God knows I’m used to angry phonecalls and e-mails and readers writing critical letters that get printed in our newspaper.

But having to take your criticism in a column published in the Darien Times? It’s just too much. From someone who thinks highly of himself to another, that stings.

And yet somehow I kind of miss you. This legislative session hasn’t been the same without you, and it’s kind of nice that you’ve decided to continue writing your column so I can continue to not read it.

I look forward to ignoring more of your insights. I hope you keep ignoring mine.

As part of The Advocate’s coverage of the chimp attack in Stamford, the newspaper carried my piece about how the state Department of Environmental Protection allowed the couple that owned the animal to keep him as a pet without the required state permit.

We carried an initial story on our website Tuesday and a longer story on Wednesday.

I was off Wednesday but the report prompted a phonecall from a Bridgeport attorney who, in the message, said he “may be representing the poor lady that was mauled by this chimpanzee.”

His voicemail was vague but indicated a desire to discuss the DEP/permitting story further.

My first thought upon listening to the message was: “That didn’t take long.”

My second was to wonder who is really culpable for this woman’s injuries.

Sen. President Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, and House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, held a press conference today to announce their plan to prepare residents for some proposed tax increases to help address the state’s gaping budget deficit.

Okay, okay. They didn’t ACTUALLY say that is what they were doing – but it’s what they were doing.

The two leaders of the legislature’s Democratic majority told reporters they had instructed the chairmen of the Appropriations Committee to prepare a list of cuts that would close the nearly $3 billion gap which the state’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis says stands between its estimate of the deficit and that of Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s budget office.

Rell has taken considerable heat for proposing what she called a balanced, no-tax-increase budget in early February that addressed a $6 billion-plus deficit when the administration in the run-up to her Feb. 4 budget address had been saying the deficit was probably closer to $8 billion.

Dems have argued she low-balled the number to avoid proposing politically damaging cuts and tax increases.

Williams and Donovan said they want their Appropriations co-chairs to provide the legislature and the public a greater understanding of what cuts will be needed to address the “real” deficit if taxes are not increased.

“Give the people of Connecticut an honest budget picture of no taxes,” Williams said.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed that by a 67 percent margin citizens want lawmakers to pursue spending cuts rather than tax increases to balance the budget.

“People need to be scared straight on this budget,” Donovan said.

One reporter suggested the list of additional cuts would basically be a sham crafted to alarm the public, similar to how local Boards of Education threaten to cut extra curricular activities and sports teams in order to gain residents’ sympathy for increasing the school budget.

But Williams and Donovan said the Appropriations co-chairs are taking the work seriously.

The Advocate ran a story today about how state lawmakers are not quite sure exactly how they will distribute Connecticut’s portion of the federal stimulus money.

I don’t mean the state has nothing to spend it on. In fact Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell has asked a task force to help her prioritize a long list of proposals from municipalities and state agencies.

But it’s unclear which branch of government will have final say on who gets the money. Will it require a full vote of the legislature or just the support of a few legislative committees or just Rell’s signature or all of the above? Or none of the above? Would the process mirror that of the state Bond Commission, which meets every few months to vote to borrow money for various projects authorized by the General Assembly and Rell?

And now Sen. Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, is asking a whole other set of questions. Slossberg in a letter sent to Rell noted the General Assembly in 2007 passed contracting reforms which will not be fully in place until 2010.

“(The legislation was) designed to bring accountability and transparency to our contracting process,” Slossberg wrote the Governor. “Although the infusion of federal support is obviously welcome in these difficult economic times, I am deeply concerned about the state’s current ability to meet the need that this funding will demand – specifically in terms of contracting.”

 It’s going to be very interesting in the coming months to see whether Connecticut’s state and local governments are able to rise to the challenge of getting the stimulus money out the door in a fair and transparent way or if the cash winds up gathering dust because lawmakers cannot agree on the mechanisms for releasing it.