July 1, 2009

 

The Honorable Susan Bysiewicz

Secretary of the State

20 Trinity Street

Hartford, CT 06106

 

 

Dear Secretary Bysiewicz:

 

I am returning to you without my signature Senate Bill 1801, An Act Concerning the State Budget for the Biennium Ending June 30, 2011, and Making Appropriations Therefor.

 

The flaws and failures of the tax and spending proposals contained in Senate Bill 1801 are manifest. It is neither balanced nor remotely realistic in its assumed “savings” and “spending cuts.”

 

Instead of reducing spending as families and businesses across Connecticut have done, Senate Bill 1801 does nothing to reduce the size or cost of a government that has outgrown the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it. Rather, it pushes the pain of sacrifice off the state bureaucracy and onto the state’s taxpayers. I cannot allow that to happen.

 

Senate Bill 1801 calls for $2.5 billion in new taxes on the people and employers of Connecticut in the midst of the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression: exactly the wrong move at exactly the wrong time.

 

At a time when states surrounding and near Connecticut are raising income, sales and business taxes, Connecticut has the opportunity to become a beacon of opportunity. Holding the line now – making difficult but necessary decisions about state spending now, as Connecticut families have done about their own expenses – will make Connecticut a far more attractive and affordable place to live and do business, keeping and attracting the jobs that are essential to recovery from the current recession.

 

What is more troubling, however, is the abject failure of this budget to reduce state spending in any meaningful way – and that the failure to do so will all but guarantee sizable budget deficits for years to come. These deficits would inevitably result in still higher taxes falling more and more heavily on Connecticut’s already over-burdened middle class.

 

Connecticut must not squander this unique – and fleeting – opportunity to make state government more affordable. We must keep in mind that in future years we will no longer be able to rely on revenue sources such as the federal stimulus, the state’s Budget Reserve Fund and cash balances in unappropriated funds.

 

The “savings” and “cuts” proposed in this budget are largely unachievable. Senate Bill 1801 proposes unidentified cuts in state agency expenses of $70 million, without providing any detail as to how these cuts will be made – especially in light of the legislative majority’s fierce and continuing resistance to serious program cuts.

 

Equally dubious are the “savings” supposed to be achieved by the “Commission on Enhancing Agency Outcomes” ($56 million), “reinvention” ($27 million) and by nebulous “management reductions” ($25 million).

 

In addition, Senate Bill 1801 calls for the state to raise more than $112 million in revenue from the “sale of state assets” – again, without details, except to task the Office of Policy and Management and the Treasurer with generating a list of items to be sold.

The bill also proposes to close two state prisons – but does not identify the prisons or make any provisions for dealing with the prisoners who may be held there now.

 

While proposing these spurious “savings” and “cuts,” Senate Bill 1801 fails to account for major expenses. There is no funding for the raises contained in three recent arbitration awards the General Assembly allowed to become final – a $42 million oversight. Even more shockingly, there is no funding whatsoever for the Department of Transportation or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

 

The legislation is therefore incomplete and built upon phony cuts and phantom accounting.

 

At the same time, the bill adds new earmarks, among them a deeply troublesome precedent that, for the first time, requires the state to reimburse municipalities for the property taxes that would otherwise be paid on land occupied by federal facilities. One can only wonder if the state would eventually find itself reimbursing communities for the property taxes “lost” to U.S. Post Offices and federal courthouses.

 

These are only some of the numerous – and fatal – flaws contained within Senate Bill 1801. It is unbalanced, unaffordable and unfinished.

 

Accordingly, pursuant to Section 15 of Article Fourth of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut and Article III of the Amendments to the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, I am returning Senate Bill 1801 without my signature.

 

Very truly yours,

 

 

 

M. Jodi Rell

Governor