[ads94]

Originally Posted by hartford_renter

The budget is higher this year than last year. Therefore there is no cut.

Do you understand?

That's not how it works.

Inflation is a factor. Debt service rises each year too. Pension obligations and state employee healthcare rises every year. All of these legally cannot be cut

If the Governor wanted to cut the budget below the funding levels of the last budget, it would be draconian and the entire state would feel it, negatively. How we got here cannot be solved. Solving it now and not kicking it down like road like Connecticut has ALWAYS done is NOT an option anymore. If this state was 100% Republican they would not be able to tax cut and budget cut Connecticut out of this.

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by hartford_renter

The budget is higher this year than last year. Therefore there is no cut.

Do you understand?

It's 0.8% larger then last year. To keep up with increasing debt payments and inflation with the same spending as last year it would have had to grow at 2%. The extra money is basically spending on old debt.

[Henry10]

Originally Posted by ads94

That's not how it works.

Inflation is a factor. Debt service rises each year too. Pension obligations and state employee healthcare rises every year. All of these legally cannot be cut

If the Governor wanted to cut the budget below the funding levels of the last budget, it would be draconian and the entire state would feel it, negatively. How we got here cannot be solved. Solving it now and not kicking it down like road like Connecticut has ALWAYS done is NOT an option anymore. If this state was 100% Republican they would not be able to tax cut and budget cut Connecticut out of this.

CT needs comprehensive reform. It has to start with the mindset. Economy is just one part. Tax / spending cuts would be a subset of a subset of a subset of reform.

Economical -- stop with the Socialist BS. Get Govt out of re-distributing wealth, which will put bad politicians out of business. Promote Capitalism. Stop illegal immigration -- i.e. importing Democratic voters, who are uneducated, poor and end up being budget deficits. Make the state a right-to-work state. Cut welfare, to both -- people and companies. Levy heavy penalties for law breakers, starting with illegal aliens. Privatize functions that Govt does in-house. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.

The only headcount to increase should be prosecutors.

Cut loose all cities. Let them stand on their own. Which means either they will go bankrupt, or fix themselves in a sustainable way. Both are positive.

And on, and on, and on, which we've talked about in this very long thread.

If you do all these, then CT has hope. As it is right now, CT continues to circle the drain.

Originally Posted by East of the River

It's 0.8% larger then last year. To keep up with increasing debt payments and inflation with the same spending as last year it would have had to grow at 2%. The extra money is basically spending on old debt.

CT is actually adding to the unfunded liabilities, so it isn't really old debt. It is new and shiny.

[RunD1987]

Do think the State needs to stop bailing out cities in CT. Slowly transition them away from State funding. The State should stop funding CT school's or CT town's. This may be a grey area only thing State should fund is managing State property/facilities in town's/cities and various yearly events in the State to promote tourism.

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by Henry10

CT needs comprehensive reform. It has to start with the mindset. Economy is just one part. Tax / spending cuts would be a subset of a subset of a subset of reform.

Economical -- stop with the Socialist BS. Get Govt out of re-distributing wealth, which will put bad politicians out of business. Promote Capitalism. Stop illegal immigration -- i.e. importing Democratic voters, who are uneducated, poor and end up being budget deficits. Make the state a right-to-work state. Cut welfare, to both -- people and companies. Levy heavy penalties for law breakers, starting with illegal aliens. Privatize functions that Govt does in-house. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.

The only headcount to increase should be prosecutors.

Cut loose all cities. Let them stand on their own. Which means either they will go bankrupt, or fix themselves in a sustainable way. Both are positive.

And on, and on, and on, which we've talked about in this very long thread.

If you do all these, then CT has hope. As it is right now, CT continues to circle the drain.




CT is actually adding to the unfunded liabilities, so it isn't really old debt. It is new and shiny.

Where are they adding liabilities? Yest there are still unfunded liabilities but they are the ones that are already there. I haven't looked to close at the budget but what I have read it seems that all the additional spending is directed at the liabilities since they now have to fully fund the Teachers Pension. It looks like capital spending is even there is nothing in there about rehiring laid off employees, so where would the money be?

On capital spending most of it is for refinance of old debt. The next biggest category is for school construction followed by transportation. Now they did also include spending 150 million on the civic center. That would be nice but we can't afford that so I think it should be dropped. School construction seems high to me as I assumed more of that was covered by towns.

So yeah I agree they could cut some more but these are real cuts.

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by RunD1987

Do think the State needs to stop bailing out cities in CT. Slowly transition them away from State funding. The State should stop funding CT school's or CT town's. This may be a grey area only thing State should fund is managing State property/facilities in town's/cities and various yearly events in the State to promote tourism.

To some extent the budget is calling for towns to pick up the slack for schools by shifting pensions to them. The wealthy towns are complaining because they pay teachers more so that would cost their pensions more. But that seems perfectly fair.

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by Henry10

CT needs comprehensive reform. It has to start with the mindset. Economy is just one part. Tax / spending cuts would be a subset of a subset of a subset of reform.

Economical -- stop with the Socialist BS. Get Govt out of re-distributing wealth, which will put bad politicians out of business. Promote Capitalism. Stop illegal immigration -- i.e. importing Democratic voters, who are uneducated, poor and end up being budget deficits. Make the state a right-to-work state. Cut welfare, to both -- people and companies. Levy heavy penalties for law breakers, starting with illegal aliens. Privatize functions that Govt does in-house. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate.

The only headcount to increase should be prosecutors.

Cut loose all cities. Let them stand on their own. Which means either they will go bankrupt, or fix themselves in a sustainable way. Both are positive.

And on, and on, and on, which we've talked about in this very long thread.

If you do all these, then CT has hope. As it is right now, CT continues to circle the drain.

On illegal immigration that's the feds job not the state we should not be spending money on it (on the same token we should not be spending money on trying to block it either)

If we upped our law enforcement and penalties it would just cost us more money, Prisons are damn expensive. It would do nothing to help our economy.

CT non state employee union participation is incredibly low. Right to work has shown no increase in wages. It some times shows increase in employment but only in more rural states. In already developed states it seems to have no effect.

We deregulated electrical power this appears to have saved the state and consumers zero money in the end, in fact some studies seem to suggest it increased state spending as there was a large increase in consumer complaints that had to be addressed by state regulators.

Now that's not to say we don;t have regulations on the books that shouldn't be done away with there are, and we need to pay special attention to make sure the barriers to entry are low for small business but we need to make sure we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. They need to be gone thru one by one.

I agree I don't like wealth redistribution thru taxes but I'm reading more and more economists on both sides who feel this is the only way. On the left because well left, and on the right because they don't want to stop policies that are allowing income inequality to happen, they would rather just redistribute it (make a larger earned income tax credit increase base of people who pay zero taxes)

Also almost every study I can find shows immigrants as a positive for a region's GDP.

[RunD1987]

Originally Posted by East of the River

To some extent the budget is calling for towns to pick up the slack for schools by shifting pensions to them. The wealthy towns are complaining because they pay teachers more so that would cost their pensions more. But that seems perfectly fair.

Wouldn't mind if State only helped fund school towns with populations of 80 thousand or more for next 4 year's. Then after that every city/town receives no funding from the State for school's.

[MrGompers]

Originally Posted by RunD1987

Do think the State needs to stop bailing out cities in CT. Slowly transition them away from State funding. The State should stop funding CT school's or CT town's. This may be a grey area only thing State should fund is managing State property/facilities in town's/cities and various yearly events in the State to promote tourism.

No chance of that happening so forget about it. School funding issues have been challenged in CT courts for decades and a case brought by the "CCJEF" is currently on appeal to the CT Supreme Court.

I correctly predicted on this forum that the initial ruling by Judge Moukawsher would be appealed to the CT Supreme Court some months ago. I also predict that if the CT Supreme Court upholds the lower court ruling it will be appealed to the US Supreme Court although the US Supreme Court is under no obligation to hear cases brought before it.

You can read a nice summary about CT court cases regarding funding and equity here

Landmark Decision Sets up Battle Over Schools Funding in Connecticut | THE CONNECTICUT STORY | connecticutmag.com

[MrGompers]

Originally Posted by East of the River

To some extent the budget is calling for towns to pick up the slack for schools by shifting pensions to them. The wealthy towns are complaining because they pay teachers more so that would cost their pensions more. But that seems perfectly fair.

A little known fact about teacher pensions is that teachers and their employer do not pay into Social Security. Most of the new teacher contracts I have seen have them (the teachers) paying 5% of their salary into a pension plan (usually called a 403b plan) and the employer matches the 5%.

If they were paying into Social Security the cities (employers) would be paying 6.2% into Social Security and so would the teachers. Whether the state picks up the cost or not, we are saving at least 1.2% on pension costs under this system.

I would rather see teachers given a choice to participate in Social Security or a teachers pension plan.
In the long run these teachers are going to have smaller payouts under the current pension plan system vs Social Security if we assume the teachers spend the majority of their careers as teachers.