August 9, 2015
From: The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer
Organizations
Contact: Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
By Ken Dixon, Stamford
Advocate, August 8, 2015
HARTFORD — The State Elections Enforcement
Commission filed a lawsuit against the Democratic State Central Committee on
Thursday in an attempt to force the party to surrender records on its use of a
federal account that helped fund the endgame of Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy’s 2014 re-election campaign. Continue reading at ….. http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Election-agency-files-suit-against-Democrats-6432440.php
GOP Senate leader:
Malloy, unions ducked legislature on pensions
By: KEITH M. PHANEUF | August 7, 2015 CTMirror.org
The top Republican in the state Senate charged
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and state employee unions
Friday with making an end run around the legislature to resolve a disability
pension controversy that the state auditors said may have cost Connecticut millions of
dollars in improper payments.
View as "Clean Read"
Seven countries near bankruptcy
USA
TODAY - 18 hours ago
Cities with the widest gap between rich, poor - USA Today
USAToday
The nation's wealthiest residents have controlled a
disproportionately large share of all income for many decades. In 2001,
however, that proportion became a majority share. Since 2007, the shares of
income controlled by the wealthiest and poorest 20% of households have steadily
diverged. In other words, income inequality has been on the rise.
Based on the Gini
coefficient, a measure that captures the level of income distribution in a
given area, 24/7 Wall St.
reviewed the 20 metropolitan areas with the most uneven income distribution, or
the highest Gini coefficients. A Gini
coefficient of 1 means all income belongs to a single individual, while a coefficient
of 0 reflects a perfectly even distribution. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut, metro area
leads the nation with the worst income distribution.
Continue reading at ….. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/07/11/24-7-wall-st-worst-gap-rich-poor/29933687/
US State Pension Plans Putting Politics Above
Retirement Returns (James Saft / South China Morning
Post)
State public pension funds love buying shares in local
companies, but it is not so much a matter of "buying what you know"
as "buying shares of companies with political clout."
A new study of equity holdings of self-managed state public
pension funds finds that they have not only a bias towards in-state companies,
but in particular towards those with political connections and influence.
What’s more, these investments aren’t winners; this bias
towards in-state politically connected firms costs the typical state pension
fund about US$225 million in annual decline in fund performance, according to
estimates in the study, which is slated to be published in an upcoming Journal
of Financial Economics. Continue reading at …..
http://www.scmp.com/business/money/markets-investing/article/1846349/us-state-pension-plans-putting-politics-above
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Also
Read Below….. State Comptroller Reports $70.9 Million
Deficit, Federal Data Bursts CT Economic Bubble, As Some State Employees are Laid Off - $93 Thousand in Bonuses Awarded to Some State
Employees Earning as High as $247,755.47,
Scathing Reports from State Auditors to
Include UConn Burdening Taxpayers with $77 Million in
“Unnecessary Interest” a deal approved by Governor Malloy, and more, much
more…..!
We should be concerned for what is on the horizon for
Connecticut’s fiscal future as noted within New federal data bursts CT's
economic bubble - The CT Mirror in
which Keith M. Phaneuf reports….The University of Connecticut’s
economic think-tank predicted Thursday that the state’s job growth this year
and next probably will stall or even decline — a dramatic reversal of
its forecast of robust job growth issued just four months ago. The Connecticut
Center for Economic Analysis, which had estimated in February that
the state could add a whopping 44,000 jobs in 2015 and 2016 combined, now says
that forecast was based on federal data that recently was “massively revised”
for the worse. View as "Clean Read"
Recently, we learned the state bestowed $93 Thousand in
bonuses on some state employees (see below) while others are not so lucky. Today, Keith M. Phaneuf
reports State gives pink slips to 95 labor department workers whose positions no longer are supported by federal funding.
View as "Clean Read"
Hospitals are also cutting back as Bristol Hospital eliminates 43 positions, citing cuts in
payments for Medicaid and Medicare. Continue Reading →
On August 3, 2015, we learned
that State COMPTROLLER LEMBO PROJECTS $70.9-MILLION DEFICIT FOR FISCAL
YEAR 2015 while a $927 million deficit is built into the 2017-18
fiscal year budget.
Recently, Keith M. Phaneuf of CTMirror.org reported
New CT budget gets mixed reviews from Wall Street noting “Connecticut is a frequent borrower, and the state’s
debt per capita and debt-to-personal income ranked first and second, respectively,
among the 50 states" Moody’s wrote.
And Connecticut’s net taxpayer support debt of $5,491 per person, or 9
percent of personal income, is well over the national median of $1,054 per
capita and 2.6 percent of personal income, according to Moody’s.
And much of
that debt is due to the promises made to Connecticut State
employees/unions by former and current state elected officials as state
employee pensions grow to unsustainable levels.
And those pensions increase with every negotiated wage increase and
randomly bestowed bonus. And recently
those bonuses took center stage as reported by CTMirror.org noting Auditors criticize UConn’s award of
$93K in bonuses without criteria noting that The
University of Connecticut doled out more than $93,000 in one-time performance
bonuses to six employees to recognize their work implementing a new financial
reporting system, the state auditors reported Wednesday. Continue Reading →
As noted within the May, 2015 publication by the Yankee Institute
captioned Connecticut's Pension Debt and the Spending Cap
Yankee writes …… the state will pay almost $2 billion –
one-tenth of the total budget – into its three major pension funds in fiscal
year 2015.2 After years of not making the annual required contributions, the
state is now trying to fund its annual pension obligations, to the credit of
the current administration. Despite this, moving the pension debt needle has
proven difficult. According to the 2014 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
issued by the state’s comptroller, accrued liabilities in the three major funds
totaled $26.3 billion, up from $24.5 billion in 2012, which means the pension
funds are now only 41.5 percent funded. Connecticut’s
pension funds are extremely underfunded. On most lists, the state is in the top
three of the most underfunded state pension systems in the nation.
As taxpayers are burdened with
high state and local public sector wages and pensions driven by State mandates
to include Binding Arbitration and Collective Bargaining, more wasteful spending of Connecticut taxpayer
dollars is being exposed by State auditors.
Keith M. Phaneuf of CTMirror.org
is reporting that the Malloy administration approved costly financing for UConn outpatient facility when it secured financing 19 months ago for a new ambulatory
services center in Farmington which included an estimated $77 million in “unnecessary
interest costs as noted within the article captioned Auditors: UConn
‘burdened’ CT with $77M in ‘unnecessary interest costs’. “This transaction will burden the state
with significant unnecessary interest costs,” the auditors wrote, referring to
financing secured in December 2012 for an ambulatory services center on the UConn
Health Center
campus.
According to
records obtained by The Mirror, the recipients, their positions and their
respective bonuses were:
- Charles Eaton II, controller, $17,782.26;
- Robin Graves-Hoagland, director of accounting, $18,116.44;
- Matthew Larson, director of procurement services, $18,755.15;
- Lori-Ann Hansen-Roy, manager of financial systems and cost
analysis, $12,134.33;
- Brett Paulson, interim manager of financial systems, $13,588.34;
- Lynn Hallarin, director of the business
services center, $12,891.23.
The Federation notes that when referring to the State’s website
Transparency Connecticut these employees are already the benefactors of impressive
taxpayer funded salaries as offered below.
|
Earnings
|
Fringe
|
Total
|
Charles Eaton II
|
203,441.30
|
44,314.17
|
247,755.47
|
Robin Graves-Hoagland
|
149,399.54
|
28,984.02
|
178,383.50
|
Matthew Larson,
|
160,495.89
|
49,276.12
|
209,772.01
|
Lori-Ann Hansen-Roy
|
123,710.27
|
37,106.24
|
160,816.51
|
Brett Paulson
|
131,867.98
|
32,266.91
|
164,134.89
|
Lynn Hallarin
|
122,092.37
|
42,854.21
|
164,946.58
|
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