Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

26 June 2014

CT State Budget: Funny/Not Funny



 Press release just received from State Democrats
TWO NUMBERS FOR VOTERS TO THINK ABOUT: $250,000 AND $20,000,000,000

Hartford, CT - Republican candidate Tom Foley has now failed twice to qualify for public financing - and his inability to competently complete a $250,000 endeavor doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in his ability to manage a nearly $20,000,000,000 state budget.

Republican leaders are now decrying how hard it is to qualify. GOP Chairman Jerry Labriola called the Citizens’ Election Program a “labyrinth,” claiming that “You have to demonstrate extraordinary organizational skills.”

If a gubernatorial candidate can’t be organized enough to manage a $250,000 effort after two tries, how in the world is he going to manage almost $20,000,000,000? The $250,000 public financing effort is about one thousandth of one percent of Connecticut’s budget.

“Think about it - if you can’t competently submit paperwork for $250,000, then how are you going to handle a budget that’s $20,000,000,000? By percentage, if Tom Foley were traveling to the bottom of the sea, he would make it a third of a foot down. If he were traveling all the way to the moon, he wouldn’t make it half way up Mount Everest,” said Devon Puglia, spokesman for the Connecticut Democratic Party. “Voters need to consider this budgetary comparison carefully - this is a barometer of a candidate’s competence, and Tom Foley doesn’t seem to have a speck of it. The Foley campaign is dodging important questions because they approached this process recklessly. Now, questions abound as to not just whether he has the capacity to run this state, but whether he can even put together a competent campaign organization with about a thousandth of a percent of the size of Connecticut’s budget.”

15 May 2011

People vs Politics - Budgets

The Milford City Budget will be voted on in the next two weeks. Having followed aspects of the Budget discussion for several years now, you would think I have lost the ability to be shocked. But no.

Head Honchos from two major Departments have informed me that the guidelines of their Budgets were predetermined by the soon-to-be-former-Mayor. Cut Positions.

At your job, if you still have one, or at your company, if you have one, a Budget is constructed with a combination of known needs and possible future purchases or increases in costs. When you are told to economize and cut your Budget, you slice away the least needed line items: break room supplies, fancy brochures, non-essential travel, tutus for the guys on the loading dock, new furnishings for the lobby.  But the very last thing you want to cut is staff.


These Head Honchos were not given an opportunity to make the cuts they would determine harm their departments the least. They were instructed by the Mayor to cut positions. Of people.

Begging for a chance to economize on office supplies and gas consumption, they were told "Cut Positions Only".

Both of the Head Honchos who spoke to me about this matter said they would have made personnel the last cut.

And they say it is purely Politics.

And they are angry and disgusted.

It is a good thing this Mayor is not running for re-election. When the Department Heads have had it you are losing all credibility in the city. It is one thing to close schools and lay off teachers (after all, kids get older and their parents may forget what happened),or cut Library hours (after all, only people who read will use the library and maybe they will all change over to Kindles) but it is quite another matter to have city employees turn against their bosses.