State Senator Thomas P. Gaffey
June 4, 2008
Budget Adjustments Include Regrettable UConn Bailout
A column from the Meriden Record-Journal by Senator Thomas Gaffey
The legislature’s Special Session next week is expected to be a one-day event, which belies its critical purpose: to finalize the current fiscal year and solidify the state’s position to start the next one. These are difficult economic times; state and local governments must plan and adjust accordingly.
The Executive Branch has asked the legislature to address budget shortfalls in certain state agencies. While it is important to recognize that these deficiencies ominously become deficits June 30, and are automatically erased with funds from the state’s rainy day account, it bears noting that a stormy economic forecast has loomed for months with little done to reign in overspending. Better planning and management by state agency commissioners could have obviated our now limited choice of moving money from agency accounts with surpluses to bridge gaps and avoid tapping into the rainy day fund.
The idea of bailing out some state agencies after they fail to live within their budget is symptomatic of the poor fiscal management that earns Connecticut poor grades when compared with other states. For the past several sessions I have joined State Comptroller Nancy Wyman to submit legislation to require state government to adhere to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). State law requires municipal governments to adhere to GAAP — or face serious consequences for failing to do so — but state government itself is exempt. This very expensive double standard allows the state government to lay off current year expenses to the following fiscal year while counting revenue yet to be realized.
One of the most consistently egregious examples of state agency bailouts is from the UConn Health Center — its current request is for a $20 million transfer to mask another deficiency this year. While the professional staff at the UConn Health Center does a fine job, the fiscal reality of a high-cost operation facing incredibly strong marketplace competition from Hartford Hospital and St. Francis Hospital cries out for a new solution. Yet the silence from the Executive Branch is deafening. At the same time I’m astounded by evidence of a sense of entitlement shown by the new UConn President as he orders renovations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at yet another residence paid for by Connecticut taxpayers.
It’s just coincidence, but the figure the UConn Health Center spent beyond its means is almost identical to what would’ve fully funded next year’s Early Reading Success program (ERS), through which grants help educators shrink an achievement gap between young readers in priority school districts and their suburban counterparts. In an early version of the current two-year budget, ERS received funding of approximately $19.7 million for each year, but in the final budget, only the first year funds were appropriated.
ERS funding for the second year was removed subject to a satisfactory performance review; it was agreed in budget talks a year ago that ahead of second year funding, the state Department of Education and its commissioner would propose improvements to ERS where and as needed. Accountability and identifiable progress were to be the prerequisites for continued ERS appropriations and those criterion were met in preparation for FY09.
Last month, as our Regular Session built to a crescendo and a second-year budget adjustment hung in the balance, the governor abruptly withdrew from negotiations, and ERS reinstatement became impossible. Priority school districts statewide — and their young, underperforming readers — will now bear the brunt of that short-sightedness.
ERS reinstatement was approved unanimously twice, first by my Education Committee and then by the Appropriations Committee. It infuriates me how the governor so callously ignored what had clearly been our legislative priority but now expects the General Assembly to simply line up and vote to send additional resources to UConn.
In the meanwhile, UConn spent $179,000 last fall on an inauguration for its new president, and nearly $200,000 more since on renovations for his accommodations. Something is terribly wrong when the neediest kids in Connecticut lose their reading program while some bloated state agencies overspend their budgets and the UConn president gets new chandeliers.
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