Speaking to a room of more than 200 community members at the UConn Stamford campus on Feb. 11, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy fielded a flurry of questions regarding his budget proposal to cut nearly $600 million in spending from the state”™s $20 billion annual budget.
Facing a budget deficit of at least $7 million for this fiscal year and approximately $550 million in the next, plus billion-dollar deficits in funding for state employee retirement benefits, Malloy”™s $19.87 billion budget revision would cut 5.75 percent from all agency discretionary budgets and reduce overall state spending by $570 million in the next fiscal year.
Members of the public, including  advocates for affordable housing and at-risk children and representatives of community health services and the state education system, sought answers as to why a range of services and organizations would lose their funding.
Throughout the more than hour-long town hall forum, Malloy stuck to the theme that hard times call for hard decisions and shared sacrifice.
“We are living in a different dynamic, one that is unlike anything we have experienced in any time in recent history going all the way back to the Great Depression,” he said. “It is time to figure out that we are not going to see the kind of growth many of us would like to see and therefore it is time to adjust to a new economic reality ”“ one of slow growth that is not going to produce the kinds of increases in income that we are used to having seen in the ”™70s, ”™80s, ”™90s and parts of the beginning of the last decade.”
Malloy was pressed on the current condition of the state by one resident who accused him of pushing service cuts, layoffs and “other destructive proposals” instead of asking “millionaires and billionaires to sacrifice a little more to make the economy work for everyone.”
“I am not pushing anything except reality,” Malloy responded. “We have raised taxes on our citizenry and I think we are at a point where we will be at a competitive disadvantage if we continue that practice, which is a way of saying it could be far more destructive to our long term growth potential if we go back to the well too often, and I think this occasion would be too often.”
Malloy twice asked the room if anyone would be willing to pay more in taxes, to which only one or two hands raised in response.
Carolyn Goldenberg, a second-generation Stamford resident, also emphasized concern for the condition of the state, noting both Stamford”™s commercial vacancy rate that has been in excess of 20 percent and the state”™s growing reputation for an exodus of business of youth.
“Companies are leaving,” she said. “Household incomes are declining. Our middle class is migrating and our children are leaving Connecticut ”“ not to come back ”“ for better opportunities elsewhere.”
Malloy said he did not know where to begin as he listed a series of contradictory points to tout the state”™s progress including an influx of companies such as NBC Sports and the close to 1,000 jobs it has brought to Stamford in addition to successes like Synchrony Financial.
He added that Stamford”™s commercial occupancy rate actually decreased in 2015, despite the changing needs of commercial real estate tenants, and that Metro-North ridership, specifically inbound to Stamford, has seen some of largest increases in recent memory.
“So I am not nearly as negative as you are,” he responded. Â “And I”™ll say that in a state where we have seen 80,00 jobs created in the last five years, 100,000 jobs created in the last six. years.”
He drew particular attention to the raft of bad publicity General Electric”™s planned departure from Farfield has drawn, overshadowing positive news.
“People make a big deal out of the fact that GE is moving 250 jobs from Fairfield to Boston, but completely ignore the fact that we kept United Technologies and Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky, representing 24,000 jobs in the state,” he said. “You are going to have some wins and some losses, but a lot of those losses will be caused if we don”™t make the kinds of investments in the future: in transportation and education and infrastructure, in cleaning up our cities and our brownfields.”
Malloy repeatedly defended his dedication to transportation and infrastructure improvements despite the burden on taxpayers.
“We may have some disagreements in the room about whose ox gets gored for what reason, but people in Connecticut want to see that their state is getting better,” he said. “We can”™t give away the position we have right now, if we want to compete with northern New Jersey and Westchester County to get New York jobs.”
One service cut repeatedly brought up by members of the audience was the $750,000 in funding the nonprofit agency Kids in Crisis would be losing to help support its mission of providing counseling and temporary shelter for children in need.
“I think that it is extremely awful that they took away 40 percent of their budget, you are only hurting the kids,” said 10 year-old Sami Goldman of Greenwich. “These kids are scared and lonely and have nowhere to go. Please reconsider giving them the money that you took away.”
As with each question, Malloy defended his budget proposals, in this case stating that the state had chosen a nationally recognized better course of action for dealing with distressed children by placing them with family members rather than third party operated facilities.
“Long-term or even a mid-term placement in a congregate facility is not in the best interest of the young person,” he said. “We have better outcomes by placing children with a family member and that is what we are going to pursue.”
Malloy ended the forum by pointing to key economic indicators such as the price of gasoline, natural gas and copper as signs of a changing national and global economy before concluding to applause.
“We are going to have to make some level of sacrifice mutually, together,” he said. “I”™m an imperfect governor. I”™m an imperfect messenger. I”™m imperfect in many different ways, but I”™m working really hard to find the right balance. I don”™t believe the right balance includes raising taxes at this time.”
