By Mary Welander
State Rep., D-114
Mary Welander
Gov. Ned Lamont last week presented his budget proposal to a joint session of the legislature. The key word to remember is “proposal”; these are suggestions about how to allocate funds, but it is the job of the legislature to make the final decisions.
There were many points in the governor’s address that I wholeheartedly support: increased funding for child care and for special education, free school breakfasts, the elimination of certain occupational licensure fees. There were also some proposals that I am concerned about, such as a jump in fees for bus and train fares. As we continue to craft the budget, I will share more details about the pros and cons that arise.
In my two previous terms, the final budget has had bipartisan support and contained massive amounts of federal funding as well as large tax cuts for most residents. This year, however, will be different. Our state has an annual budget of roughly $22 billion; of that, $16 billion typically comes from the federal government. As we have seen since President Donald Trump was inaugurated just a few weeks ago, we can no longer count on anything being “typical” when it comes to the federal government, and that includes funding. Time will tell how this will go.
If you have been reading my columns or my weekly newsletter, you know that I try to approach everything with common sense and an open mind, focused on facts and information, not reactionary political grandstanding. I’ve developed a reputation for that in Hartford as well; it’s something I am proud of.
With that in mind, you will probably have noticed a shift in my communications. I may be a Democrat, but above all I am an American. I love this country. I watched my younger brothers go into combat over and over and over to defend the principals of this amazing and sometimes frustrating country. It is with that love that I say that what is currently happening in Washington is not normal, it is not about “efficiency,” and it is not American.
If your first reaction is to dismiss or defend what is happening, consider this: what if I as your state representative went to the board of education offices and locked out our superintendent and all staff, and then proceeded to collect HIPAA and FERPA privacy-protected student documents, and issued statements firing all the teachers? What if I went to the tax collector’s office and barred Tax Collector Tom Hurley and all staff from entering and started erasing data from records? It wouldn’t be okay here, and it’s not okay in Washington, either.
By the time this goes to print, perhaps things will have changed. I would like nothing more than to be wrong about where I fear this may be going, but I feel a responsibility to call attention to what is happening to our nation’s institutions. We are all responsible for the success of our democracy.
“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick