The gripes keep jumping and the dudgeon is high. During the special General Assembly session in June, lawmakers quietly bailed out the red-ink-hemorrhaging UConn Health Center in Farmington to the tune of $20 million.

It's a typical annual deficit for an inefficient operation that not only takes patients away from Hartford's two hospitals, but also offers big-time benefits and hefty retirements plans for its state-employee medical staff.

Health center officials recently predicted an $11.5 million deficit — already — in the fiscal year that started July 1.

If the health center were accountable at all, like Bridgeport Hospital, say, it would have been taken off life support and gone out of business a long time ago. But fortunately, they have you, the taxpayers, and them, the gullible lawmakers who decline to force the health center to sink or sink.

At this rate, there are no incentives for UConn Health Center officials to streamline operations and save costs and their executive salaries.

Conning lawmakers on keeping the health center open is small potatoes compared to the vaunted UConn athletic department's ability to stress the importance of Division 1-A football as the starch in the fabric of a college experience.

Taxpayers are subsidizing full scholarships for mostly out-of-staters who have squeezed Connecticut athletes out of the chance to play for their university.

Yet alumni, who pay through the nose guard for seats, merrily froth over

Advertisement
the "success" of the team in recent years. Hey, there are about 32 bowl games each year; they need someone, preferably with a .500 record, to play. ?

Speaking of saving cash, if you think more drivers are actually slowing down on state highways because it increases fuel efficiency, I'm pleased to say you're wrong.

I believe that the idiots who drive 80 on the interstates are the same people who are so self-centered and deluded that they think it's OK to stop their cars at red lights, empty their ashtrays or candy wrappers onto the street and blithely go on their way.

?

If you don't think Gov. Jodi Rell is a Republican, first remember that she vetoed the bill that would raise the minimum wage from $7.65 a hour to $8 next Jan. 1 and $8.25 a year later. The veto was overridden in the House and Senate, with help from Republicans, and will now become law.

Then, to confuse things, consider that Rell's answer to some problems is the very un-Republican expansion of state government.

So if Department of Transportation engineers can't keep track of contractors installing phony catch basins along Interstate 84, what does the governor propose? Splitting DOT into two behemoths instead of one. That became legislative road kill during this year's session.

Rell recently celebrated another bill that would recreate a separate Department on Aging, splitting it away from the state Department of Social Services, into which is was rolled by then-Gov. Lowell "Big Guy" Weicker, the purveyor of the state's personal income tax 17 years ago. Weicker was a Republican when he was ousted from the U.S. Senate by Joe Lieberman back in 1988, then became an independent.

Back 20 years ago, the annual state budget was about $8 billion. It's now $18.4 billion. That was the same year the Legislative Office Building, adjacent to the Capitol, was finished. Now, in oblique homage to Bob Dylan, it's booting its Spanish marble.

Workmen on hands and knees are finally installing the new stonework along the baseboards in the underground walkway linking the Capitol to the Legislative Office Building.

Instead of that crumbling, black Spanish marble, which they yanked out using hammer and chisel last month, they're reinstalling Indian granite, which is supposedly four times stronger.

Eric Connery, the chief building administrator for the Capitol complex, said the Spanish marble was the last of the batch that was taken out of the LOB a few years back, when it was found to be breaking up and falling, creating a public-health hazard on some of the decorative columns.

The marble should have been more durable, you'd think.

Connery said even the baseboards, with no loads on them, were showing signs of spidering and splintering. The cost of the work is less than $200,000. That's certainly a meager amount in the Capitol, where $5 million has been budgeted for rebuilding several rooms in the LOB.

?

Speaking of rebuilding, Sen. Dan Debicella, R-Shelton, seems to be over his freshman year smarty-pants phase.

Still, most of the spring he was right there with Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, and House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, R-Norwalk, blasting the majority Democrats' $18.4 billion spending package as a "do nothing" budget.

The Democrats, realizing the growing deficit, abandoned their hopes of last winter to increase spending and instead agreed with Republican Rell to stand pat and let the second year of the biennial budget, approved last year, take effect July 1.

Republicans, desperate for a campaign issue that might increase their 44-107 minority in the House and 13-23 minority in the Senate, seized on the gas tax issue and pushed for an early retirement plan for veteran state employees, neither of which Rell bought.

Among the perks of incumbency are the free, taxpayer-financed mailings that lawmakers are allowed during the year. If you pay attention to your mail, surely you've recently received these from your state rep and senator, because there's a mid-July deadline.

Anyway, in the colorful six-page mailer I have here from Debicella, there's no mention of the "do nothing" budget, but all kinds of "accomplishments" that were mostly the result of the Democratic majority.

It must be an election year. Ken Dixon's Capitol View appears Sundays in the Connecticut Post. You may reach him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or via e-mail at kdixon@ctpost.com. His Web log, Connecticut Blog-o-rama, can be seen at forum.connpost.com/politics.