Political Capitol

Not long ago State Budget Director Robert Genuario, a former Republican state Senator from Norwalk, dismissed rumors he was eyeing the early retirement package being offered to thin the ranks of state employees and help balance the budget.

Turns out what’s been helping to fuel the rumor is the inclusion of Joan McDonald, the state’s Commissioner of Economic and Community Development, in private budget talks.

I happened to see McDonald in the capitol today and figured I’d ask what’s up. Turns out it was a timely question because she informed me today happened to be her two-year anniversary on the job.

McDonald admitted her presence at the talks is unusual.

“The Governor has requested I sit in budget meetings because of the impact this budget has on the economy and corporate citizens,” McDonald said.

I asked if she’d be interested in taking over Genuario’s job and she laughed saying I told her I had one question. And I decided not to hassle her any more on her anniversary.

The state Department of Environmental Protection just announced it has teamed up with Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport for an “exotic animal amnesty day” on July 25.

The announcement comes on the heels of recent news coverage about some of the problems facing passage of a bill intended to ban a wide variety of exotic and potentially dangerous animals in the state.

That legislation was proposed in reaction to February’s chimpanzee attack in Stamford, but questions have arisen over what residents who own a banned pet are supposed to do with it should the bill pass the General Assembly and be signed into law by Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell.

“We’ve been discussing it with Beardsley and got it organized and wanted to announce it,” DEP spokesman Denis Schain said. “Given the attention the issue has had we thought it was a postive step and a good program to put in place.”

According to the DEP the amnesty day will “provide a convenient, safe and ‘no questions asked’ way for people to bring in exotic animals they may own legally or in possible violation of state law.”

Schain said the amnesty day will go forward regardless of whether the so-called “chimpanzee bill” passes because Connecticut under current law already prohibits possession of some animals, such as large cats, bears and primates (Travis, the Stamford chimp killed by police after mauling his owner’s friend, was grandfathered into the law).

“We’ve been discussing it with Beardsley and got it organized and wanted to announce it,” Schain said. “Given the attention the issue has had we thought it was a positive step and a good program to put in place.”

Animals will become the property of DEP and, with the assistance of the zoo, provided to “suitable and safe homes.”

Similar initiatives have been successful elsewhere.

The state Senate in a party line vote last night approved the Democrats’ “concensus revenue forecasting” bill which, depending on whom you talk to, is either a.) the cure for future battles between the legislature and Governor over the size of the state budget deficit or b.) a transparent partisan attack on Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell and her budget staff and a distraction from the real business of addressing the fiscal crisis.

House Democrats have been relatively silent on the proposal, which now heads to that chamber for final passage.

I’m not ready to place any bets, but it seems pretty unlikely it’s going to be brought up for a vote between now and the end of the session June 3.

House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, would not rule it out, but neither did he appear super enthusiastic when we spoke today.

“It depends on what’s going on with negotiations with the Governor and what progress we’re making,” Donovan said.

He acknowledged the House’s Republican minority is unlikely to let the legislation pass quietly and there is less and less time in the session to waste on long debates.

“It certainly will be a talker, let me put it that way,” Donovan said. “I have to gauge that as well.”

Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, the co-chairman of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, said he would like to use concensus forecasting in future budget years.

“But I don’t know if it’s helping right now,” Geragosian said.

And Diana Urban, D-North Stonington, who has for a few years been working on new approaches to crafting the state’s budget, said although she is all for concensus forecasting she doubts it will be raised in the House.

“It should have been done in January. We can’t do it now,” Urban said. “I’m not going to say ‘no don’t do it.’ But we’re in crunch time.”

If the House doesn’t take this up, the real victim here is not the state of Connecticut, which will have to settle for an old-fashioned budget, but Jeffrey Tebbs, the Yale Law School student who had a front row seat in the Senate chamber for Thursday night’s debate.

A paper Tebbs helped author on consensus forecasting planted the seed in the Senate Democrats’ minds to pursue the policy.

Just think of the line Tebbs could use in New Haven bars this summer if the state actually adopted his proposal.

“Hey there. You know how Connecticut just became the 27th state to adopt consensus forecasting? That was all me, baby.”

UPDATE: The House DID pass the legislation over the weekend on Saturday. When I asked insiders in both the House and Senate if it was coincidence the Senate at the same time passed two health reform bills important to Speaker Donovan, I received knowing smiles.

And apparently the fact House Republicans did not feel like blowing a whole Saturday debating concensus forecasting to death helped as well.

Yesterday Rhonda Stearley-Hebert, spokesman for the state’s Judicial Branch, told me that Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s administration never told the branch about its plans to shutter a handful of courthouses, including the one in Norwalk, as part of a revised two-year budget proposal.

Today Stearley-Hebert issued a strong statement from Chief Court Administrator Judge Barbara Quinn.

“The Judicial Branch fully recognizes the current economic crisis facing Connecticut and the difficult choices facing the Governor and the legislators. From the start, the Judicial Branch, through the leadership of Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers (of New Canaan) has made clear its willingness to bear its share of sacrifices for the ultimate benefit of the residents that all three branches serve,” Quinn wrote. “We have reached out repeatedly to the Executive and Legislative Branches over the past several months to keep the lines of communication open and to achieve additional savings. It is therefore with dismay that on Thursday we obtained a copy of the Governor’s second proposed budget. While we had hoped to have the opportunity to discuss the cuts in advance, we were not consulted and we heard of them only after the cuts were announced … The proposed elimination of six courthouses represents a major restructuring of the court system in Connecticut and should be considered only after careful and thoughtful planning among all three branches. This has not occurred.”

House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, told me yesterday he hopes if a final budget requires some courthouse closures that the Judicial Branch will be allowed to make the decision.

It’s 8:40 p.m. The Senate just began debating the controversial “consensus forecasting” legislation Senate Democrats threw on the table last night.

The debate is likely to last for hours.

Senate President Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn, last night said House leadership was on board with the proposal even though House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, was conspicuously absent when Williams visited the capitol press room.

Asked earlier today to comment on the amendment, Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, co-chairman of the legislature’s Appropriations Committee, did not exactly provide a ringing endorsement.

“Right now our focus is on keeping the (budget) process going and negotiations (going) … That’s what we have to be doing at this point,” he said.

Apparently the consensus forecasting proposal is what brought budget talks to a screeching halt yesterday.

Later today, when Donovan met with reporters to discuss the Governor’s new budget proposal, I asked him if the House Democrats will take up their Senate counterparts’ consensus forecasting bill between now and the end of the session at midnight June 3.

Donovan said he is not sure. But he also credited the consensus forecasting bill for compelling Rell to make her updated budget proposal public.

“I’ve been trying the ‘nice guy’ approach,” Donovan said. “Maybe the tough amendment works better.”

But then the next question is if consensus forecasting did in fact get Rell to show her hand, why not pull the bill as a gesture to clear the air with the Governor and move forward with budget talks? Why spend tonight even debating this issue?

Williams’ spokesman Derek Slap just told me with a very straight face this is not some game and his caucus feels very strongly about the importance of consensus forecasting as a tool for solving the current budget crisis.

All I know is those precious minutes of my life I’ve wasted either typing or using the words “consensus forecasting” in a conversation are gone forever and I can never have them back.

The revised budget Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell released today borrows millions of dollars to help cover the state deficit.

Democrats quickly noted it was only a few months ago the Governor frowned upon a similar proposal the majority party made in its two-year budget.

“They do nothing to address the bloat of state government,” Rell told reporters at the time in a prepared statement. “Not one agency elimination. Not one merger. Not one consolidation. And THEY ARE BORROWING – YES, BORROWING – to close this year’s budget deficit. It’s as if they have just given up.”

The Rell administration is likely going to respond there are distinctions between what the Dems proposed and what she proposed and that she bit the bullet and made the tough cuts, only turning to borrowing when she had exhausted other options (except tax increases, which she still refuses to embrace).

Rell today essentially said she was holding her nose in proposing the borrowing, calling it a move she would prefer not to make but the Democrats have left her little choice.

“But these notes will be paid off in seven years,” Rell said. “Tax increases are forever.”

But maybe next time Rell or her speech writers should tone down the strong anti-borrowing language because, particularly in these unprecedented fiscal times, something she condemns one month might wind up being part of a final budget solution the next.

Earlier this afternoon Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell issued a revised budget proposal to reflect the fact her budget staff are now estimating the two-year deficit at $7.95 billion as opposed to the $6 billion figure she used in February.

What hasn’t changed is Rell’s insistance the budget be balanced without the tax increases proposed by legislative Democrats, including the higher income tax rates that would target wealthier households of $250,000 or more in Fairfield County.

Rell said she does not relish proposing the new cuts – which include, locally, proposed closures of J.M. Wright Technical School in Stamford and the Norwalk courthouse.

“Are they better choices than tax increases? The answer is ‘yes’,” Rell told reporters.

State unions have been urging lawmakers to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. I noted that many of the cuts appear to impact programs that assist middle or lower-income residents but Rell responded “we are all sharing in this.”

A bit later during their own press conference House Democrats, including Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, Majority Leader Denise Merrill, D-Storrs, and the chairmen of the legislature’s Finance and Appropriations Committees said the popular Governor’s true values are on display and she is leaving the state’s well-to-do “unscathed.”

“Her proposals tend to hurt those who are hurt most in the recession,” Donovan said.

Rep. John Geragosian, D-New Britain, an Appropriations Committee chairman, noted Rell is still pushing across-the-board fee hikes that will hurt some as much if not more than tax increases.

“She can’t get off saying she has a ‘no tax’ budget,” Geragosian said.

During a discussion following Rell’s press conference, House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk, took issue with my question about the Governor’s budget impacting those residents with less means.

He argued that many citizens who pay taxes do not share in the very services they are helping to fund.

“The majority of our citizens don’t rely on the state for anything,” Cafero said. “The people who are not represented in the budget are suffering more than anybody in the state.”

In response to the Democrats’ deficit forecasting proposal outlined below, the legislature’s Republican minority is trying to force the majority party to vote on its two-year budget proposal by adding that as an amendment.

Many Democrats support their party’s fiscal plan, but some – particularly those from lower Fairfield County – have balked at the scope of the income tax increases and leadership have been reluctant to force a vote knowing they probably do not have enough support to override the expected gubernatorial veto.