Rep Hovey Likens Special Session

To ‘Groundhog Day’

Referring to the film, Groundhog Day, State Representative DebraLee Hovey released a statement following this week’s one-day special legislative session likening the effort “to the Bill Murray movie where the same day is repeated over and over again.”

Rep Hovey said in the statement that Governor M Jodi Rell called lawmakers to a special session intended to address the midyear deficit caused by what she called an “irresponsible budget” passed into law by legislative Democrats.

“While it is inconvenient, and a little sad, that the governing party conducted such shoddy financial planning, this special session [presented] an opportunity to do something different,” said Rep Hovey, who represents about 1,000 Newtown constituents and all of neighboring Monroe. She went to the session hoping lawmakers from both sides of the aisle agree to cut state spending to a level the taxpayers can afford — and spare property taxpayers “the horror of an unexpected cut in municipal aid.”

Rep Hovey said her Republican colleagues proposed a deficit mitigation plan that does just that.

“Our plan does what this year’s budget failed to do, cut state spending nearly across the board in recognition that tax revenues have plummeted,” she said.

Rep Hovey believes the GOP plan reduces or eliminates unnecessary patronage jobs, programs and commissions that either help very few people or in some cases none at all, and layers of administrative waste.

“In this time of crisis, we must move to a necessity-based budget, rather than funding a wish list we simply cannot afford,” she said.

She said the current budget, which passed the legislature on a Democratic party line vote two months ago, was supposed to balance an $8.5 billion deficit over two years with tax increases and borrowing while making not a single cut to state spending. But five months into the fiscal year, Rep Hovey said State Comptroller Nancy Wyman told legislators that the state’s finances are more than $466 million out of balance for the current budget cycle, and that the state will face a $3.2 billion deficit in the next budget cycle.

“It would be easy to blame our current woes on the national economic climate and chalk it up to a one-time problem; however, using that excuse would be intellectually dishonest,” she said. Rep Hovey said in the last year, Connecticut shed 85,000 jobs, 9,000 businesses, and posted a budget deficit several times larger than the one that caused it to institute the income tax in 1991.

“The private sector has not added a single job to the economy in Connecticut since 1989,” Rep Hovey said, adding that the state’s dubious status as the highest taxed and most indebted state in the nation has killed jobs, chased business away, and ruined the foundation of the state’s economy.

“When the national economy takes a hit, Connecticut gets whacked harder than most,” she said.

Rep Hovey said she was alarmed because in the midst of an $8.5 billion deficit this year, the Majority’s budget actually increased spending and borrowed money to pay for it.

A call from The Bee to Senator John McKinney seeking GOP Senate perspective on Tuesday’s brief legislative gathering was not immediately returned following the session.

According to an Associated Press report from Hartford following the brief session Tuesday, Democratic legislative leaders in Connecticut said they were working on a plan to close the state’s budget deficit, saying said they hoped to return in the coming weeks, possibly before the end of the year or even before Christmas, to vote on a different plan.