Rell formally vetoes Democratic budget; talks continue
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By Ted Mann
Published on 7/1/2009
Hartford – After pledging to do so over the weekend, Gov. M. Jodi Rell formally vetoed a Democratic budget bill Wednesday, the first day of the 2010 fiscal year.
In a message accompanying her veto, Rell wrote that the Democrats’ budget was “neither balanced nor remotely realistic in its assumed ’savings’ and ’spending cuts.’
“Instead of reducing spending as families and businesses across Connecticut have done, Senate Bill 1801 does nothing to reduce the size or cost of a government that has outgrown the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it,” the governor wrote. “Rather, it pushes the pain of sacrifice off the state bureaucracy and onto the state’s taxpayers. I cannot allow that to happen.”
Rell and Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, and Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, spent much of the last several weeks engaged in a war of press releases and public criticism over the budget impasse.
But the last few days of June saw them engaged in long talks aimed at reaching a deal on a budget for the next two years, during which Connecticut faces a cumulative deficit now estimated as high as $8.85 billion. That included a marathon negotiating session Tuesday at the Governor’s Residence in Hartford, though, according to ground rules agreed to by all sides, no public statements on the extent of their progress or the subject of disagreements have emerged from the talks thus far.
The governor issued an executive order Tuesday afternoon to keep certain functions of the state from shutting down today in the absence of an adopted budget. The order allocates about $1.3 billion from the state’s General Fund and $110 million for special transportation projects, and is intended to maintain state operations through the end of July.
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