And check out these deficit-related documents:
Budget Timeline
Economic Report
News Release

HARTFORD — Thirty minutes to read a hundred-page bill? Is that anyway to run government? Well, that’s what’s going on at the Capitol these days, where majority-party Democrats run the show. They continue to unveil complex, budget-related legislation late at night — hours and hours after the time they asked Republicans to show up in Hartford. Disappointed GOPers were forced to vote on bills after midnight — bills they barely had a chance to read. Early Friday, about an hour after midnight, House Republican Leader Larry Cafero asked Democrat leadership to give his colleagues a break from the waiting game. And Gov. M. Jodi Rell on Friday morning called the super-majority inefficient while telling reporters that Democrats have mastered the art of “hurry-up-and-wait.”

State government should be different: more responsive, closer to the people, more diligent in its duties; a body of citizen-legislators. Unfortunately, the manner in which a state budget was finally passed this year has shown that the Connecticut General Assembly is no different than the mess in Washington.

The Legislature passed the largest tax increase in state history targeted directly at the business owners and job creators that our state is looking to put the 70,000 Connecticut workers who lost their jobs in this recession back to work. Despite a huge deficit and a slow economy, the budget actually increases spending. To fund that increase, the budget borrows over a billion dollars.

This budget was a consequential document, one that I voted against because it will cost Connecticut jobs and indebt our children. But the process by which this budget was passed is every bit as bad as the bill itself.

Since January, the Legislature’s single most important task was to pass a budget. Yet the Majority stalled and refused to compromise with the Governor, pushing the budget well past due. When a deal was finally reached, a bill was drafted behind closed doors and dropped it on our desks just hours before a vote was to be held. It was 700 pages long.

I doubt anyone who voted in favor of it knew everything contained in the bill. Negotiators worked until the very last minute to insert pet projects and earmarks into the package, and language was constantly changing.

Yet 103 members of the House approved the budget over the objections of myself and others because they were told that this was the budget their leadership wanted.

At a time like this, would you spend even $100 without knowing what you’re getting? Would you spend money because someone else told you to?

The final word has yet to be uttered on our state’s economic crisis. The Legislature is almost guaranteed to return in special session this fall to go through another round of deficit mitigation- a deficit caused by irresponsible levels of borrowing in the budget we just passed. Details will come to light about all of the pet projects and waste that were preserved, even in the face of the recession, because some legislator or other wanted to bring home the bacon.

And inevitably, someone who voted for this budget will stand up and say, “I didn’t know, don’t blame me. I didn’t read the bill.”

That is exactly the problem.

The state budget that was recently passed into law was a 702-page monstrosity of a bill, dropped in the laps of legislators just hours before the Democratic Majority in Hartford voted overwhelmingly to pass it. Those 702 pages contained a litany of provisions hazardous to Connecticut’s economy and our communities: job-killing tax increases, $1.55 billion in new spending, and $1.3 billion in borrowing that further sinks our state into debt.We voted against this budget. In addition to the offensive levels of taxation, spending, and borrowing, those who voted in favor of the bill by and large did not read it because Legislators were given virtually no time to do so. Voting on legislation that has not had time to air publicly almost always results in more bad news surfacing after the fact.The public is now finding out that the budget has imperiled state funding for Newtown High School’s expansion by canceling $7.8 million in school construction debt service payments. Unless something changes, Newtown and other municipalities could face a moratorium on payments from the state for projects already in progress, like Newtown High. Should that funding be canceled, the shortfall will be transferred to Newtown’s taxpayers — exactly what state funding was intended to avoid.

Even more offensive is that while school construction projects were being put in danger, the Democrats slipped nearly $8 million worth of earmarks and pet projects into the budget just before passage. Our children and public schools took a back seat to special interests in the budget that was passed.

The sloppy and haphazard manner in which this bill was written and passed by the Democrats is squarely to blame for this mess. A $37 billion budget should require serious debate and public scrutiny. Instead, the majority wrote the bill behind closed doors a few hours before passage, gave the press and other legislators only a brief synopsis of what was contained in the bill, and told their rank and file how to vote. Regrettably, few Democrats crossed the aisle in opposing the budget.

The Legislature can fix this problem when it meets in special session later this month, but it never should have happened in the first place. Most Americans would not sign a contract without reading it, nor would they take the word of someone else when considering a major financial transaction. Yet that is exactly what the Democrats did in voting for a budget they had not read, and it is exactly why we voted against the budget.

We, along with our Republican colleagues, will continue to pressure the Majority to rectify this problem. Let us hope that, unlike during the budget debate, the Democrats give adequate consideration to the consequences of their actions this time around.

• Delaying implementation of the in-school suspension of students that will require millions to hire
  additional certified personnel and identify dedicated space;
• Delaying implementation of policies that raises the age of juvenile offenders from 17, a program
  that will cost towns and police department $95 million in personnel and constructions costs;
• Delaying the requirement that towns and cities post meeting agendas and minutes on the web;
  Requiring a two-thirds majority vote by the legislature to pass any more mandates;
• Adding “services’’ to the list of purchasing contracts that DAS can enter into for municipalities