Democrats Deliver Favors Amid Budget Cuts

Op-ed as it appeared in the Hartford Courant

By Len Fasano

Budgeting is about choices.

This year, lawmakers building the state budget were faced with a choice between continuing to operate the same way the state has for the past six years, or rejecting business as usual and choosing a new path.

Unfortunately, the Democrat’s final budget chose the former.

The Democratic budget cuts from the most vulnerable and lacks many of the long-term structural changes our state needs to build a better future. It also perpetuates the typical political favoritism we see all too often in state government. It chooses politics over people.

It’s disingenuous for the Democrats to claim that their top priority is caring for the less fortunate when their budgets continue to put the special interests of particular lawmakers above the needs of others. Although Democrats touted this as an austerity budget, the austerity apparently did not apply to their political giveaways. The budget this year had handouts a plenty to ensure its passage.

The pain in this budget is undeniable. For example, education was cut more than $60 million, with reductions hitting towns, school transportation, special education and Open Choice programs for children in Connecticut cities.

Yet, at the same time, new education earmarks totaling more than $1 million dollars were quietly handed out to five towns: Stonington, Hamden, Madison, New Britain and Farmington. The only reason these towns got this money is because of particular politicians who represent them. They are not the poorest or neediest towns when it comes to education. In fact, three of these towns’ education budgets are already overfunded by the state. It’s shocking but not surprising. Last year education earmarks totaling $2.4 million were handed out to choice towns for the same wrong reason. This year, those special handouts roll forward as if they were part of those towns’ budgets all along.

Also this year lawmakers cut hundreds of millions of outstanding bond authorizations, but Democrats still found room to preserve $22 million for the billionaire-owned hedge fund Bridgewater Associates to renovate its offices, and approved new bonding including $10 million for open space in Glastonbury, $1.7 million for public internet and canal rehabilitation in West Hartford, and $7 million for property acquisition and development in Waterbury. At a time when the Democrats cut hundreds of millions from mental health care and other services that help the disadvantaged, why is the state continuing to pick winners and losers and committing us to new handouts?

These political handouts are at the sacrifice of our most vulnerable populations. The Democratic budget cuts millions from Connecticut’s welfare program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It reduces dental treatment access for the poorest children in our state. It reduces funding for nursing homes, aging-in-place programs and for critical mental health and substance abuse treatment. It cuts from rape crisis, child abuse and neglect intervention, and domestic violence shelters. It targets the poorest of the poor at the end of their lives by cutting funeral allowances for families of the indigent. And it results in $130 million in cuts to hospitals that care for the neediest individuals.

So I ask: Why does one of the world’s largest hedge fund businesses get a handout the same year the state is cutting from education budgets? Why does West Hartford get new money for public internet when mental health grants are being slashed? Why are priorities in this budget so skewed?
Certainly Connecticut needs to reduce its spending as a result of years of failed fiscal policy. However, cuts without a change in policy will ultimately result in future budget failures. We need structural change in the way we operate government. That means doing things like capping spending and limiting how much the state borrows. It also means putting an end to the political favoritism that so often weaves its way into the state budget. People need to come before politics.