The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State deals with labor, but work remains
Somewhere between Democrats’ euphoria and Republicans’ doom, lies the lasting consequences of the General Assembly narrowly adopting a new agreement with state labor unions.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy negotiated concessions and deals with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which most individual labor unions approved and the Democratic majority House of Representatives passed 78-72 last week. On Monday, Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman broke the 18-18 tie along party lines in the Senate.
It is weak praise to say at least the Legislature voted on the contract; in other years they have just let agreements become policy.
Connecticut is in a bind. The $1.57 billion in concessions will go far to close the $5.1 billion gap in the two-year budget, though obviously it will take a lot more belt tightening to reach a balanced budget — without raising taxes.
State employees agreed to wage freezes for three years, three furlough days, higher health insurance co-payments and an increase in pension contributions from 2 percent to 4 percent, still well below the national average of over 6 percent. Still, these concessions from state workers are significant. Future employees will have a hybrid retirement plan that includes a defined pension contribution as does most private industry now.
But no union would give up benefits without something in return and what they got was a guarantee of no layoffs for four years and contracts extended another five years, from 2022 to 2027. This is the thorn because it will affect options for years to come. Republicans call it kicking-the-can-down-the-road. All should remember when thengov. John Rowland negotiated a contract in 1997 that locked in for 20 years and was extended by the Malloy administration in 2011.
Critics, such as Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, charge the deal will “hamstring” the state for a decade with “no ability to streamline government in challenging financial times.”
Democrats, following Malloy’s script, tout the agreement will save the state about $24 billion over the next 20 years.
At this point in the summer, though, options came down to few. If the contract with concessions had not passed, then the entire process of crafting the state’s finances would have been thrown into further chaos.
Under Malloy’s executive order to keep the state running, necessitated by the Legislature’s failure to adopt a budget by the end of June, some services have been curtailed and the situation would only get worse when municipalities would feel the burn in September.
The time to deal with reforming state employee benefits and pensions was months ago — not now that the road has led to the edge of the cliff.
Republicans offered a balanced budget at the end of April, and rejiggered it twice when income projections lagged. Democrats would consider none of it, and came up with only thin, unvetted proposals.
As legislators finally buckle down and put together a budget, it should be done with both parties contributing ideas. And it needs to be done now.