State Senator Jonathan A. Harris
June 16, 2008
Harris “Disturbed” By Governor Rell’s Veto of a Private Provider Bill That Her Own Administration Helped Write
Governor’s misstatements on cost and consultants also alarming
State Senator Jonathan A. Harris (D-West Hartford) said today that Gov. M. Jodi Rell's veto on Friday of a bill that would have sought ways to find more money for the state's embattled private provider agencies is "disturbing" considering that over half a million lives are impacted, the governor's own budget office helped negotiate the wording of the bill, and that it passed both chambers of the General Assembly on a unanimous and bipartisan vote of 183-0.
"This is disturbing. I'm tremendously surprised and disappointed with her veto," said Sen. Harris, who is co-chairman of the Human Services Committee. "The governor's administration was in on these negotiations. The bill passed the legislature unanimously. It's a slap in the face to our non-profit providers in the state, who provide care for half a million needy people. We're just turning our backs on them."
Senate Bill 678, "AN ACT ESTABLISHING A COMMUNITY-BASED HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES CABINET," would have established a four-year, 25-member Health and Human Services Cabinet in the state Office of Policy and Management, the governor's budget office. Generally, the cabinet would have been responsible for assessing funding for Connecticut's nonprofit community providers, which provide community-based behavioral health, developmental disability, education, and substance abuse programs to approximately 500,000 Connecticut children and adults. By December 31, 2012, the cabinet would have made recommendations to the governor and to the Appropriations and Human Services Committees for a plan to implement a statewide Health and Human Services Plan.
According to the non-partisan state Office of Fiscal Analysis, there would have been no cost to the state or municipalities for the creation of the cabinet or its work; all work would have been done "within available appropriations," according to the language of the bill (Sections 3 and 4).
"The governor claims that the cabinet would have spent money on consultants and additional studies, and that it was just another layer of 'bureaucracy'," Sen. Harris noted. "But her own administration helped draft language that ensures all work would be done within available appropriations. And I find nothing 'bureaucratic' about a group of stakeholders getting together to save the state and its taxpayers money by ensuring that these vital services do not end up crying on the doorstep of the General Assembly a few short years from now. Certainly a governor who has appointed task force after task force after task force can understand that."
"I also find it beyond ironic that 48 hours after the governor vetoed a unanimously popular bill on the false grounds that it was a duplicative waste of taxpayer dollars, she announced the name of an outside consultant that she has hired to conduct a study of her administration's gross mismanagement of cost estimates for the New Haven rail maintenance facility," Sen. Harris added. "This was a very short-sighted veto on her part."
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