"Connecticut union launches TV ads to address job cut threat" by Susan Haigh Associated Press March 01, 2016
HARTFORD — Amid worsening state budget deficit projections and a threat of more than 1,000 job cuts, one of Connecticut’s largest state employee unions launched a television ad campaign on Monday attempting to portray state workers as more than a ‘‘budget cut’’ or ‘‘political football.’’
I'll bet GE leaving hasn't helped.
It marks the first public salvo in what could be a contentious debate in the coming weeks among Governor Dannel P. Malloy, the General Assembly, and the state employee unions over how best to address the state’s current and projected shortfalls.
The ad is part of the union’s ‘‘One Connecticut’’ campaign. It appears to underscore the frustration of some state workers following successive years of budget deficits and cuts to state services they provide.
While I may sympathize with them in theory, there is something about government unions that rubs me wrong.
Those are the only unions left these days, and they are unions against taxpayers with administration breaking negotiated promises. So don't blame me for the way I feel.
‘‘I’m not sure how the state employee is actually driving that cost as much as they say that we’re driving it. I’m just not seeing it on our end,’’ said Darnell Ford, a direct care staffer at the Department of Children and Families who works with children with mental health issues and appears in the TV ad.
How many kids have died on your watch?
‘‘It’s frustrating and concerning that we’re being blamed, we’re being targeted.’’
Vivian Riera Llantin, who oversees the HIV prevention program at the Department of Public Health, says in the ad, ‘‘I am not a budget cut.’’ She said there is a misperception in the public that state employees are ‘‘always the ones damaging the budget.’’
Stop your whining!! Lucky to have a job!
The ad comes as new figures from the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis show the deficit in the current $20 billion fiscal year general fund budget has grown to $266 million, and the following fiscal year beginning July 1 could be $900 million in the red.
Last week, Malloy, a Democrat, told reporters that those figures could either improve or worsen. But in the meantime, he promised ‘‘state government is going to be substantially smaller in the not too distant future.’’
And he's a DEMOCRAT!
On Monday, his administration canceled expected pay raises for managers, saying the state’s fiscal situation has ‘‘deteriorated significantly.’’
There, you union workers happy now?
Denise Bystrek, a head nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs health center in Rocky Hill, proclaims in the ad that she is not a political football.
‘‘We’re at minimum staffing, so it’s hard to imagine what layoffs would look like, because it seems like every budget year they cut more and more and the services get cut back more and more. And really, what’s left?’’ she asked....
Oh, the VA is getting short staffed?
Is Connecticut a sanctuary state?
Time to PUNT THIS POST AWAY!
--more--"
How can the budget be in such bad shape with the still-chugging along recovery (according to the federal government)?
Related: Connecticut Override
That was his mistake.
