Think you can balance Connecticut's budget?

[Alexander]

http://www.courant.com/news/politics/budget/

"Connecticut budget balancer

Try your hand at eliminating the red ink in Connecticut's budget."

I found this to be very interesting, much like the webpages that ask you to reduce the federal budget deficit.

[Larkspur]

1. I was told by Malloy supporters that his 14 years as Mayor of Stamford

made him qualified to be governor. He'd hit the floor running, I was told. I didn't know that meant he'd be running away from the problem or from the consequences of his decisions.

Looks to me that he's trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and working classes. Yes, he's proposed raising some taxes on the wealthy, but he could do more. The $2 billion in concessions he's asking of the public sector unions appears by some experts to be irrational. Critics skeptical Malloy can reach union concession goal Malloy has yet to say how much the state would save by eliminating the various levels of non-union management.

While I'm no fan of Malloy, I think Foley would have been worse. My problem with Malloy is that he is a bully at heart and so is his spokesperson, Roy Occhiogrosso. My suggestions is that Malloy needs to fire Roy O and his PR staff and find a new one that doesn't share his "glass half empty" and "anyone who criticizes me or my ideas is an enemy" view of the world. Balancing the state's budget was always going to be a massive headache but a good PR team could have helped communicate the problems and the various solutions in a better way than what Occhiogrosso's team has been doing.

Malloy also doesn't help his poll numbers (PUBLIC POLICY POLLING: Most groups disapprove Gov. Malloy's job performance ) when he treats constituents as political enemies:

SNIP

Wildaliz Bermudez of Hartford told Malloy that when she graduated from Trinity College she was unable to find work and ended up moving back home with her mother. At the time she didn’t have health care and ended up needing medication that cost close to $1,000 a month. She said if SustiNet was in effect during that time she would have benefited from a health insurance plan she could afford.

“I embrace the desires and goals of SustiNet,” Malloy said. “We’ve got a pretty big challenge ahead of us. Number one I’ve got a $3.3 billion deficit. Number two between now and 2014 we have to implement the federal health care changes enacted one year ago. Both of those things are pretty big tasks.”

He told Bermudez that under the federal plan, which he embraces and is working to implement, she would have no cost or low cost health insurance too. He then turned the table on her and asked how much SustiNet will cost over the next two years.

“I don’t think it’s about how much it will cost, but how much it will actually save,” Bermudez told Malloy as the crowd applauded. Malloy recited his budget deficit figures again.

“If you don’t have healthy constituents then what’s the point of fixing the deficit,” Bermudez’s sister chimed in.

Malloy insisted he will have this discussion, but urged Bermudez and her sister to come back with some figures.

SNIP

Malloy Urged To Increase Taxes On Wealthy, Adopt SustiNet

This exchange demonstrates the lack of empathy Malloy has with ordinary people, like this woman, who has an emotional investment in the state's health care issue. Reciting budget stats in response to her situation, one that is shared by many, is a callous way to treat her and others who share her situation. Remember, the crowd applauded her, not Malloy in this exchange. A good PR staff would have told him not to act this way to a constituent and would have helped him with devising proper customer service procedures to handle situations like this one.