“I believe Connecticut is at a crossroads”

Article as it appeared in the Hartford Courant regarding the state Senate’s vote on Gov. Malloy’s state employee concessions deal.

The Senate on Monday narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the wage and benefit package for 44,130 state workers that is designed to shave $1.5 billion from a deficit estimated to top $5 billion over the next two years.

The measure’s fate was unclear until well into the roughly five-hour debate, when three fiscally conservative Democratic senators — Paul Doyle of Wethersfield, Joan Hartley of Waterbury and Gayle Slossberg of Milford — each announced they would back it.

“I’ve struggled with this,” Doyle acknowledged. “I spent a lot of time learning about it … I do know there is some good in it and some bad in it.”

Doyle said he came to the Capitol unsure of how to vote, but ultimately decided to support the agreement because rejection would create chaos.

Slossberg said she, too, spent hours reading and thinking about the proposal and also concluded it deserved her support.

“It’s not a bunch of giveaways [but] a reasonable package,” Slossberg said. “There are big savings in this … without this agreement, we will have a $1.5 billion hole in our budget … and that’s a really big hole.”

The vote ended days of drama and speculation. The Senate is evenly divided —18 Democrats and 18 Republicans. Republicans were unified in their opposition while most Democrats supported the proposal. A no vote from either Doyle, Hartley or Slossberg would have tanked the deal. In the end, it was left to Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman to break the tie, as the state Constitution dictates.

The three Democrats came on board after their party’s leaders pledged to “do their best” to advocate for systemic reforms to bolster the state’s fiscal health, Doyle said. Those proposals include capping the amount of money the state spends on capital projects and limiting future labor agreements to four years, proposals Republican lawmakers have long advocated.

“We do not turn around … projected long-term deficits in a year,” Hartley said. “The risk is that we react to immediately solving our fiscal crisis without dealing with the looming fiscal problems that are there. My goal, working with colleagues, was to develop workable initiatives.”

But those changes will be dealt with in the future. On Monday, the debate centered on the union agreement negotiated by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and overwhelmingly approved by state workers. The House of Representatives signed off on the deal last week and the Senate’s approval was the final hurdle.

Sen. Cathy Osten, a Democrat from Sprague and a retired correction guard, opened the debate at 2:19 p.m. by urging her colleagues to support the pact, which includes a three-year wage freeze, three unpaid furlough days and higher pension contributions and health care copays and premiums in exchange for four years of no layoffs and an extension of the benefits package until 2027.

The labor pact, Osten said, makes significant changes to the state employee compensation package and will save the state $24 billion over the next two decades.

But Republicans said the savings built into the package aren’t enough. Moreover, they were critical of a provision in the deal that extends the benefit package for a decade, saying it would lock future governors and legislators into a binding commitment without knowing what the state’s fiscal climate would look like in 10 years.

“I believe Connecticut is at a crossroads,” said Sen. Paul Formica, a Republican from East Lyme. “I believe this deal as presented is unaffordable for our state and will tie the hands of our legislators and our governors for years to come.”

Formica and other Republicans said state workers enjoy a benefit package far richer than is generally available to most private sector employees. “Workers on Main Street, Connecticut are not afforded some of the benefits contained in this particular contract,” he said, citing longevity pay, tuition waivers, protection from layoffs and other perks enjoyed by state workers.

Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, compared Connecticut to the Titanic. Alluding to Malloy’s decision not to seek re-election, she said: “Gov. Malloy is the captain, yet he doesn’t have the decency to go down with the ship.”

The debate exposed a deep ideological rift. Democrats portrayed it as a fight over the future of organized labor and the preservation of middle class jobs while Republicans viewed it as a last-ditch stand to preserve the state’s fiscal health.

“This deal is going to break our government,” Sen. Art Linares, R-Westbrook, said. “This deal is a devastation waiting to happen.”

Read more from the Hartford Courant.