Now She Tells Us

MANIFESTO

Governor Clubwoman has finally

“exhausted” spending cuts to close an estimated budget deficit of $8.55 billion over the next two fiscal years.

Rell, a Republican in office since 2004, told reporters in Hartford yesterday that she probably would include some form of tax increase in a new budget proposal her administration will unveil today, a month after the state’s new fiscal year began.

Only the governor's intransigence got the state into this situation, viz., being only one of three states in the nation that "missed their July 1 [budget] deadlines and are still operating without complete budgets." The lack of a budget has created myriad problems for the state, among them

[Stamford's] J. M. Wright Technical School will not reopen this fall or the next.

Late Wednesday afternoon, state education commissioner Mark K. McQuillan announced operations at the Stamford school would be suspended.

"Due to the retirement incentive program and voluntary transfers, the J.M. Wright professional staff has been reduced to 12 faculty," McQuillan said in a statement.

While situations like Wright's occurred, the governor sat on her hands and, OJ-like, continued to look for spending cuts that didn't exist. Now that the state is in a real mess (and, perhaps more importantly, her approval ratings are decreasing), all of a sudden, she's run out of ideas. Of course, she never had any to begin with.