Governor Dannel P. Malloy has proposed a budget that he knows has little chance of success. In order for the Governor’s budget to fly, State Employee Unions have to give up one billion dollars in concessions per year for two years. So, what are the unions saying about that?
"I can't say $1 billion is a very easy number," said Leo Canty, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Employees Association, referring to a year's worth of proposed union givebacks. He added that when it came to Malloy's call for shared sacrifice, "we may have slightly different definitions."
And John W. Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, said Wednesday night that while union members "recognize we have problems in the state, when you look at Wall Street and the housing market and all these things that have happened to us on the financial side - these are not things the workers have created."
Olsen wondered why Malloy wasn't raising taxes more on the "top 5 percent wage-earners in this state" rather than on the middle class.
“Asking middle class workers to accept higher taxes, and asking those middle class workers who are state employees to accept $1 billion in concessions, while asking Connecticut’s wealthiest residents to increase their tax rate only two-tenths of one percent does not seem balanced to us,” said Matt O’Connor, the communications director for the Connecticut State Employees Association/Service Employees International Union (CSEA/SEIU).
Of course it remains to be seen how negotiations will end but right now it doesn’t sound as if the Unions are interested in playing ball. And if the unions balk Malloy admits there really is no back-up plan, unless you call sheer chaos a plan.
Oh and by the way, want to see what it looks like when the head of a state is scared to death of the special interest group that put him into office? Check out the near-grovel as our new Governor begs the teacher’s union to actually let the increase in municipal
“I’m asking you not to take this additional 270 million in funding for education and use it to demand pay raises that will surely result in some of your colleagues losing their jobs or having larger class sizes. All that would accomplish is more people out of work and ore students per teacher. And please don’t take that as a threat, it’s not, it’s a respectful request that reflects the reality of our times.”
Governor Malloy, even though I did not vote for you Sir, I really don’t want to see the leader of my state begging. It’s just so…unseemly.
And when it comes to the sweeping income tax increases that will affect about 81percent of state residents and the additional taxes on just about everything but sunlight, Governor Malloy says "Asking virtually everyone to share a slightly higher tax burden is the only way we can ensure that no one group of people bears a much higher burden,"
In other words, instead of only picking rich people’s pockets I’m going to pick every pocket I can get my fingers into because that’s the fair thing to do.
This post uses excerpts from articles by Kenton Robinson at The Day
http://www.theday.com/article/20110217/NWS12/302179395
and Chris Powell at the Journal Inquirer http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2011/02/17/chris_powell/doc4d5c6ba4dddde536947829.txt
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