As noted in previous blog posts, the Democratic-majority General Assembly and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell are technically supposed to reach a deal on a new, two-year budget by July 1, the start of the 2009-10 fiscal year.
And that’s being generous. Really a deal should be reached by the end of the regular session on June 3.
And yet so far neither side can agree on the size of the deficit – $6 billion? $8.7 billion? More? Less? Something in-between? – or even on how to dig the state out of the red in the current, 2008-09 fiscal year.
During a press conference today I asked Sen. President Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn and House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, if they could say today there would be a deal by July 1.
I thought at least one might say it’s looking pretty unlikely, but neither took the bait.
“I don’t think it does anybody any good to say ‘we’ll be here in the summer and fall’,” Williams said.
But some other high-ranking Democrats have more readily acknowledged this is looking more and more like a long budget season.
House Majority Leader Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, immediate past co-chairman of the legislature’s appropriations committee, told me recently: “Frankly, I think we’re going to be here quite a while trying to sort all this out.”
“Even though the budget comes out in early April, who knows when we get an agreement with the Governor and all parties. This will take a while,” Merrill said.
My money’s on Merrill.
