Malloy’s Budget Game Must Match Words
A budget-season miracle happened during Gov. Dannel P. Malloy‘s State of the State address Wednesday. The lightbulb finally went off.
It wasn’t a General Electric brand lightbulb, but it was better than nothing.
One fiscal year after completely losing control over the budget process, Malloy said all the right things: “Connecticut state government must reset our expectations of what we can afford … We need to make our budget more predictable, more sustainable and more transparent.”
Malloy laid out five budget principles: limiting spending to available resources (which he described as “similar to a zero-balanced budgeting approach”), addressing long-term unfunded liabilities, prioritizing core services, improving agency spending accountability and streamlining the actual budget process.
Whether his change in attitude is the result of soul-searching or a desperate attempt to reclaim his legacy is largely irrelevant. If the proposals are good and the governor sticks to them, Connecticut’s taxpayers and businesses will begin to see measurable positive results.
Horvath, Joe (2016, February 7). Malloy’s Budget Game Must Match Words. Hartford Courant. Retrieved from http://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-horvath-testing-malloy-budget-principles-0209-20160208-story.html