The existential cake theorem

In the festering rancidity of the General Assembly’s never-ending budget impotency, we have learned many things.

We now understand that you can have your cake and eat it, too, without applying quantum mechanics. We’ve learned that legislative leaders sometimes don’t know what’s going on in the minds of their House and Senate members.

We’ve learned that UConn is more than a place with a joke of a football team and where classes are optional for the men’s basketball team.

We’ve learned that the leaders of the House of Representatives, Speaker Joe Aresimowicz and Majority Leader Matt Ritter, are a little too transparent for their own good.

Then there’s Oct. 1, which is coming round the corner next weekend like a freight train loaded down with goodies for the cities, but thanks to the aforementioned impotency, very little for the big, bad suburbs, who think they’re above what has been Gov. Dan Malloy’s multi-year effort to begin funding state employee pensions the way they should have for at least the last quarter century.

Yes, the pressure, you’d think, is building on the General Assembly to finally complete the job they were supposed to first finish by June 7, the statutory adjournment date of the 2017 session; by June 30, the end of the 2016-17 fiscal year; by July 1, the start of the next biennium ...

I know what you’re thinking: Why start now? If you live in Bridgeport, what’s a slightly higher tax rate? If you’re a Greenwich hedgemoney dude, your kids go to private school anyway. So what if Town Hall raises the mill rate to say, 13? You gonna put low-test gas in the Maserati? Teslas are where it’s at, anyway.

Aresimowicz and Ritter were probably as shocked as anybody early on the morning of Sept. 16, when the closet Republicans came out and put the GOP budget over the top, 77-73 in the family-friendly viewing hour of 3:15 a.m. How many insomniacs and diaper changers were awake watching CTN, the propaganda channel of the Legislature, when that scene finally played out, as if the chandeliers had finally been pulled by their roots from the vaulted ceiling of the great House chamber, crashing in a cascade of glass?

The deal started going down in the Senate 12 hours earlier, when a trio of conservative Democrats in the Senate hitched their wagons to the GOP budget amendment, an 1,100-page document that was submitted about a half hour after the debate started. It’s 18-18 in the Senate this year and 79-72 in the House, virtually eliminating any margin for error in party unity. So when the three amigos, including Rep. Gayle Slossberg, DMilford, voted for the GOP plan, Democratic leaders learned something indeed.

It reached the House about 9 p.m.

Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, a Fairfield Democrat, voted to adopt the measure in a preliminary vote of 78-72, which allowed it to the floor. By voting against it six hours later, she proved the existential cake theorem of this column’s second sentence.

Ah yes, Democratic leaders must pine for the glory days of those huge, do-it-your-own-way majorities that allowed them to stonewall and hoodwink Republicans. Back 10 years ago there were 114 Democrats to 44 Republicans in the House. It was an even, 24-12 bulge in the Senate. Leaders could either let dissenters go, because of local considerations, or they could be disciplined: taken off their favorite committees; lose chairmanships; get transferred to the Internship Committee. Now there’s a place to build a power base,

Then there’s Oct. 1, which is coming round the corner next weekend like a freight train loaded down with goodies for the cities, but thanks to the aforementioned impotency, very little for the big, bad suburbs, who think they’re above what has been Gov. Dan Malloy’s multi-year effort to begin funding state employee pensions the way they should have for at least the last quarter century.

Previous to this year’s nasty, ugly, ornery, dumb stalemate (where leaders let personal vacations dictate schedules in their caucuses; I mean what did these lawmakers sign up for?), the latest a state budget had been approved was Aug. 31 of 2009. Even the dead-ender year of the personal income tax, 1991, was completed by the third week of August.

So when the smoke cleared and the 1,100 pages were carted to the Legislative Commissioner’s Office for review for a few days by a crew of sleep-deprived nonpartisan lawyers before heading to Malloy’s office for the promised veto, forces began to mount against what Republican leaders were billing as a “bipartisan” budget. Unions were calling it illegal. UConn President Susan Herbst was singing the blues over $244 million in cuts.

Then the caravan of “UConn” buses were driving down to the Capitol and the students were chanting “Tax the rich,” a public policy option that was given no air by Democrats this year, as if they have the slightest chance in the world to hold the governor’s seat next year. Research brings in tens of millions of dollars a year, so full professors have lighter loads and the university takes advantage of academic migrants: adjuncts who get paid a pittance without benefits.

That’s where we are. It’s ugly. It’s going to get worse on Oct. 1, but finally, Republicans have something in play, so maybe, just maybe, we can have the first bipartisan budget in 10 years. Stranger things have happened. But nothing particular is coming into my mind at this moment. Wait: the cake theorem!