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COMMENTARY: Connecticut Missed Its Big Budget Chance

By Chris Powell

As it raises spending by nearly five percent in each of its two years amid

negligible inflation, a record surplus, and with good times still rolling,

will the 1999-2001 state budget make Connecticut noticeably better?

Probably not. For while no one is going to call it a bad budget -- only one

senator and one representative voted against it -- it seems to put most of its

new money into solving political problems rather than problems of quality of

life.

A big chunk of new money is devoted to raising the pay of employees of the

nursing homes that care for welfare patients; the sharp union tactics of some

of those employees panicked Governor Rowland and leaders of the General

Assembly a few months ago and thus achieved first priority with the new

budget.

Another big chunk of new money has been appropriated for state aid to towns,

which similarly goes largely toward paying raises for employees.

While a special increase has been appropriated for state aid to local school

construction to reduce what otherwise would be borrowed, thus reducing

interest costs, the savings will be overwhelmed by the extra $100 million to

be spent on the business-inspired honeypot of downtown Hartford redevelopment

called "Adriaen's Landing," as if Constitution Plaza's failure to save the

city in the 1960s and the Hartford Civic Center's failure to do so in the

1970s and '80s contain no lesson about downtown redevelopment's irrelevance.

Of course a share of the surplus will go back to the taxpayers in the form of

a rebate, credited this time against sales taxes paid instead of the state

income tax, the better to avoid federal taxes. But while there is never

anything wrong with giving people their money back, even the political

statement of the rebate -- reminding the taxpayers of their primacy -- rings a

bit hollow here given its small share of the surplus, merely 20 percent. That

is, claims for more spending have taken 80 percent of what was left over from

the expiring budget.

State Rep. John W. Thompson, D-Manchester, an expert on the welfare of

children, voted for the budget but says it reflects neglect of important

social programs, particularly those aimed at children in trouble. How

neglected those programs really are may be debated, but the numbers show that

state government this year considered nursing home and public employee

salaries and the third downtown Hartford redevelopment much more important.

State Rep William A. Dyson, D-New Haven, co-chairman of the Appropriations

Committee, blames the recently enacted constitutional limit on spending for

imposing too much restraint on the programs cited by Thompson. But Dyson

acknowledges that the cap has forced legislators to set tighter priorities.

And even those legislators who recognize the vast social needs that

Connecticut still only papers over have failed to press their superior

priorities vigorously. It is one thing to wish out loud that Connecticut would

do better by its neglected children; it is quite another to make a stink about

the corporate welfare the state suddenly has undertaken in a big way, or about

the haste and thoughtlessness with which the governor and legislative leaders

made huge financial commitments to the New England Patriots and the nursing

home union and the downtown Hartford project, or about the destruction of

public administration represented by government policies like collective

bargaining and binding arbitration for public employees, or about the state's

futile persistence in treating drugs as a problem of criminal justice instead

of a problem of public health.

Devotion to improving Connecticut might involve challenging some of

government's bad habits of public policy and its capitulation to special

interests, not just meekly supplicating for a little incremental cash here and

there when the good times produce a surplus. This was a legislative session

when some structural change in government might have been afforded, but as a

result of this budget only those people who are on government's payroll

directly or indirectly are likely to notice anything different.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)