State Jobs for Party Loyalists, Ct owes Fed
Gov $574,311,822, Holder racked up $1.45M travel tab, How government unions
have doomed California taxpayers,Malloy continues
support for Unions, and Much More News
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Pratt
losing more jobs 575 taking buyout; engine-maker expects more cuts
State of Connecticut
Payments to Vendors
FY 2005-2006 thru 2011-2012
Data from the State of Connecticut –
Comptroller’s Office
From the Highest Paid of $22.5 Billion to
$10,000
Prepared by Robert Young, Sec-Treasurer of
FCTO
July 4, 2013
Questions? Contact ryoung0@snet.net
http://\www.ctact.org\upload\home\BOBSTVENDOR.xls
July 17, 2013
From: The Federation of
Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations
Contact: Susan Kniep,
President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
State Jobs for Party Loyalists
Another excellent article from Jon Lender: Officials' Children Get Plum
Summer Jobs At State Agency highlights
the fact that the State of Connecticut
is not an equal opportunity employer.
State appointed and elected officials have for years been
controlling the disbursement of Connecticut’s
most valued commodity – State jobs!
Nearly 17 years ago, in August, 1997, I wrote an op-ed which
appeared in the Hartford
Courant captioned Good Government or Just Good Politics .
My intent then was to disclose that which I believed few
knew – that House Republicans, House Democrats, Senate Republicans and Senate
Democrats were allowed to give State jobs to party loyalists and exclude the public
from applying.
The highest paid Partisan job at that time was $104,000. Today, it is over $230,000! In fact, many Partisan state jobs today pay
well in excess of $100,000 with wages and benefits factored in.
On July 1, 2013, I received the following from the State’s
Office of Legislative Management….
In response to your Freedom of Information
request, attached please find the list of partisan and nonpartisan employees.
Our total number of active employees is 474. The number of employees listed on
the transparency.CT.gov website includes state legislators as well as temporary
employees that work only during the legislative session.
Partisan positions are filled by each caucus.
Each caucus gets a budget each year and are able to
recruit and appoint individuals to these positions as they wish.
So in essence, we, the taxpayers, give our State legislators
money so they can hire their friends!
This was wrong in 1997 and it is wrong today!
I had hoped that since 1997, this practice had
stopped. In fact, my June, 2013 FOI
request included the following “I would appreciate being directed to the
policies and procedures used when hiring for
partisan positions”. Instead the
response was, and it deserves repeating, “Partisan positions are filled by each
caucus. Each caucus gets a budget each year and are
able to recruit and appoint individuals to these positions as they wish”.
So, like the energizer bunny, the practice in 1997 just kept
going! Energizing
some – the Recipients of these state jobs. At the expense of others – the overtaxed Connecticut taxpayers -
many of whom are not energized but instead exhausted from attempting to find a
job at a salary which is commensurate with an income needed to support their
families.
As I noted within my 1997 article which can be accessed by
clicking on the heading Good Government or Just Good Politics , Connecticut taxpayers should not have to toil each day to
pay their taxes to promote patronage or guid-pro-quo
politics in State government. These partisan jobs should be open to the
tax-paying public, which finances them.
If our elected state representatives and senators continue to deny the
public access to these state jobs, then the money to pay for these lucrative Partisan
jobs should come from the state Republican and Democratic parties – certainly
not from the taxpayers of Connecticut many of whom are on the unemployment
line.
And working for Legislative Management can be financially
rewarding as the following links illustrate…
The First and Second Lists were constructed
from the State of Connecticut Transparency Website in an excel format. The Lists include the 832 Partisan and Nonpartisan
employees under Legislative Management for a total cost of $54,177,973 for
Fiscal Year 2012.
List 1 is By Names listed Alphabetically
at http://www.ctact.org\upload\home\LEGALPHA.xls
List 2 is By the Highest Paid at http://www.ctact.org\upload\home\LEGALHIGHEST2.xls.
List 3 is the List of Partisan and NonPartisan
Positions as provided by the Office of Legislative Management which can be
accessed at….. http://www.ctact.org\upload\home\Part.xls Upon our review of this list, it appears there are names on
the list which are not on the State’s Transparency Website. As such we have asked Legislative Management
to provide us with the current salaries/benefits of all Partisan positions. We will in turn provide this to you upon our
receipt.
In the interim, List 4, will provide you with a snapshot of
the total wages and benefits being paid with individual names excluded. http://www.ctact.org\upload\home\Partisan
Pay List.xls
Please let us know your thoughts on this issue, as we
further pursue attempting to end this practice and opening all state jobs to
the public which finances them.
Write to fctopresident@aol.com.
*************************
The beholden state – how government unions have doomed ...
California
taxpayers
How
public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a
cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening
in slower motion.
By Steven Malanga July 09, 2013
Editor's note: The following opinion article
is adapted from the new City
Journal book, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013),
"The
Beholden State: California's Lost Promise and How To
Recapture It
"
The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU), California’s
largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking
into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good
memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot.
“Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’
The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid
depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their
state. The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers
thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school
teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn
six-figure salaries.
Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now
suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of
firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic
combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has
produced recurring budget crises around the state.
How public employees became members of the elite class in a
declining California
offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is
happening in slower motion. Continue reading at ….. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/09/beholden-state-how-government-unions-have-burdened-california-taxpayers/
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Governor Malloy continues his support for
unions …….
Malloy sides with unions, vetoes bill key to Waterbury
Hospital deal ... “The
veto of the bill …… casts uncertainty over the acquisition strongly supported
by Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary as a means to retain a major employer”.
In 2012, headlines read Malloy supports workers striking against HealthBridge
- Connecticut ... to include walking
the picket line. Subsequently, HealthBridge Files For Bankruptcy Protection -
Hartford Courant . Headlines today
read …. HealthBridge Increasing Pay for Union Members
*************************
Connecticut owes the Federal Government
$574,311,822 Million in loans to cover unemployment benefits as noted within the July 11, 2013 article captioned States
make 'disturbing cuts' to unemployment benefits - USA Today which notes that “Overall, states still owe Washington more
than $21 billion for loans they took out to replenish their funds, according to
the most recent federal data. “California owes the most, at $8.6 billion.
Indiana, New York, Ohio and North Carolina all owe more than $1 billion.
“Others have sold bonds to pay off debt, and that borrowing isn't represented
in the federal data”. Read complete
article at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/11/stateline-unemployment-benefits/2508115/
*************************
Graphic: How NSA collects, analyzes phone records Keeping top-secret tabs
on your phone calls The U.S.
government is secretly collecting and analyzing the phone records of millions
of Americans. One operation, authorized by a secret court order, requires a
subsidiary of telecom giant Verizon to give the National Security Agency
extensive data on phone calls of customers from April 25 to July 19. One
possible process of how the NSA and Verizon are operating: Continue reading at
…..http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/09/nsa-phone-records-data/2404991/
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The hidden 17% tax: Your cell phone bill Your wireless
carrier isn't the only one pocketing money when you pay your cell phone bill. Local, state and federal governments, 911
systems and even school districts tack on taxes and surcharges to your wireless
bill that end up costing American cell phone customers an extra 17.2%, on
average, according to the Tax Foundation. That's up from 16.3% fifteen months
ago. For consumers accustomed to single-digit sales taxes, these double-digit
fees can appear unusually burdensome. But unlike sales, income or property
taxes, wireless taxes remain largely hidden -- tacked on to the end of your
monthly wireless bill and often ignored. They shouldn't be. A $60 cell phone
bill actually costs the average customer $70.32. Continue reading at …… http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/10/technology/mobile/wireless-taxes/
*************************
Malloy Vetoes Two More Bills |
CT News Junkie July 12, 2013 Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy vetoed two more bills that passed the General Assembly on the last
day of the legislative session. One bill would have required a doctor to oversee all
cosmetic medical procedures performed at places called “medical spas.” The bill
was supported by plastic surgeons who said they often were left having to
correct the botched procedures done at these spas by medical professionals who
are not doctors……. The second bill Malloy vetoed on Friday would have voided noncompete agreements employees have with their employers
if the business is acquired or merged with another company.“Unfortunately, this bill leaves certain key terms
undefined or unclear. As a result, this bill has the potential to produce legal
uncertainty and ambiguity in the event of a merger or acquisition,” Malloy said
in his veto message. The bill was one of 19 that was
on the consent calendar the House passed moments before the clock struck
midnight. As of Friday, the governor has signed 327 bills and vetoed 8. Read entire article at http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/archives/entry/malloy_vetoes_two_more_bills1/
*************************
Holder racked up $1.45M travel tab in 2011, documents show Attorney
General Eric Holder took trips that cost taxpayers $1.45 million in 2011,
according to documents revealed by Bloomberg News
on Friday. Bloomberg found that in 2011, Holder took a partly personal trip on
a government jet to Las Vegas
that cost taxpayers $46,358. Several other strictly personal trips cost the
government at total of $169,502. The Justice Department took more than a year
to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg for the travel
records, the outlet said. The report comes on a day when Holder is expected to
unveil new guidelines for Justice Department monitoring of
journalists. Continue reading at
….. http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/310721-holder-trips-in-2011-cost-145-million-report
*************************
UConn Markets Bond Sale To Alumni and Institutional
Investors
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