Excerpts from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy”™s remarks May 9 to the Connecticut General Assembly at the close of the 2012 session.
“Over the course of the last 16 months we have pushed more change through these two chambers than has occurred in Connecticut in a long, long time ”“ positive, meaningful change.
We”™ve changed our economy, growing thousands of new, private sector jobs for the first time in years. We”™ve created 18,100 new, private-sector jobs in the past 16 months, and the unemployment rate is 20 percent lower than it was the first time I spoke here. We”™ve gone from being two-tenths of a point above the national unemployment rate to a half point below.
With our design-build legislation, and with our project labor agreements, we”™ve changed the way construction projects will get done in Connecticut and in the process we”™ll create thousands of good-paying jobs.
We”™ve changed our state”™s finances. We”™ve closed the worst-in-the-nation deficit and we”™re firmly committed to keeping our books honestly for the first time in a long time.
We”™ve changed our blue laws to bring us in line with our neighbors and we”™ve begun the process of making our liquor laws more consumer-friendly.
We”™ve changed our election laws and in the process we are making it easier for people to participate in their democracy.
We”™ve changed the way that we respond to major weather events and in the process the state and its utilities will be better prepared to handle emergencies.
We”™ve made more intelligent changes to our criminal-justice system and in the process we”™re continuing to restore confidence in the system”™s accuracy and fairness. Those changes are part of the reason crime is at its lowest rate in 44 years.
And now, thanks to votes you made over the past few days, we”™re changing our public schools.
We”™re putting more education dollars into our lowest-performing districts, something almost no other state is doing and we”™re ensuring that those dollars will be spent wisely. We”™re creating a thousand additional seats for young children to have a chance at pre-kindergarten learning experiences. And we”™re recognizing and supporting our teachers, administrators, parents and students in ways they”™ve been asking us to for years.
That”™s a lot of change. It”™s required a lot of tough decisions to be made. Along the way it”™s ruffled a lot of feathers. That”™s because change is hard ”¦ But change is also necessary. While the world changed and while states around us changed, Connecticut stood still. Thanks to the men and women in this chamber that”™s no longer the case. Now Connecticut is changing, too ”“ for the better.
Before my friends on either side of the aisle get nervous, let me say that I”™m not declaring victory or suggesting our work is done ”“ far from it ”¦ We need to continue to focus on creating jobs ”“ every day, that should be our first thought. We need to continue to be vigilant about the state”™s finances. We are in much better shape than we were 16 months ago, but we”™re not where we need to be yet.
Let”™s keep squeezing every dollar we can out of state government. Let”™s make government more efficient. Let”™s continue the conversion of the state”™s books to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
And now that we have passed a bold education reform package, a package that has the potential to allow our state to pull ahead of other states instead of lagging behind, we must implement that change. If we do this, someday our children will thank us.”
