Stephen Anderson, Air Pollution Control Engineer
Stephen Anderson, Air Pollution Control Engineer
“Governor Rell recently provided testimony to Congress on the nation’s economic downturn. Reading her comments, I can’t help but worry about where her allegiance lies, who she will protect, and who will be thrown under the bus.
It’s clear her allegiance lies with big business and the same Wall Street cronies that got us into this mess. It doesn’t take more than about a hundred words before the Governor tells us what she sees as the real crisis, that “Wall Street bonuses and bonuses for top executives…will be dropping dramatically.”
She goes on to talk about how much Connecticut “depends” on income tax revenues from financial sector employees. Where was the Governor when a progressive solution such as the “millionaire tax” was proposed? Wouldn’t that have been a good way to stave off the crisis we are in today?
The Governor says, as she has said before, we literally need to “work our way out” of this situation. On this point, I couldn’t agree more. She has encouraged Congress to pass a new stimulus package funding projects here in Connecticut to do just that. At the same time, she says she wants to “recast” our public institutions to focus on their “core missions.”
So who will be thrown under the bus? Residents and business that rely on our public institutions for “core” services, if the Governor cuts the workforce that delivers them. Instead, she should engage the State’s public employees as partners in “working their way out” of this situation while preserving needed services.
The reality is that we all need our safety and security to be protected, our public education to be effective, our roads, bridges and transit systems to be safe and efficient, our health and medical services to be accessible and reliable, and our natural resources to be preserved.
Cutting these “core” services to spare the budget would be like draining the village well during a drought.”
-Stephen Anderson
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