It is a tall order, but Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says it must be done.
The Malloy administration and the state-employee unions took their first steps Wednesday as talks began in an effort to reach $2 billion in savings over two years.
The Malloy administration says the state could save $300 million over two years with a pay freeze, but the unions say the figure is actually closer to $200 million.
Some insiders are skeptical whether savings of that size can be reached, but Malloy says there is really no other choice - because the other choices are thousands of layoffs for state employees or deep cuts to the state's safety net.
Malloy himself was not inside the room Wednesday, saying he would leave the nuts-and-bolts to the negotiators.
"We don't have a lot of options in Connecticut,'' Malloy told reporters Wednesday. "I have not hidden the fact that in the absence of success, we'll have to go down a different road [for more budget cuts]. We'll be prepared to go down that road if we must.''
But Malloy still believes that a compromise can be reached.
"I'm hopeful,'' Malloy said. "Listen, I have talked to many, many state workers and some labor leaders, and I think everyone understands that we all have a big obligation on our back'' to try to reach a compromise. "Hopefully, we're going to find a way to resolve this. ... Whether we will make progress will have to wait another day.''
In order to keep the talks low-key and avoid a battery of television cameras facing the negotiators on the first day, the two sides agreed to keep the time and place of the meeting secret.
But insiders say that the talks will be structured generally as they have in the past. The outcome, however, is the wild card.
On the union side, longtime attorney Dan Livingston will be the chief negotiator - as he has been during the administrations of Republican governors John G. Rowland and M. Jodi Rell. Some of the state's top union officials will be in the room, including the 13 union chiefs who head the SEBAC coalition. Those include Sal Luciano, the head of AFSCME Council 4, one of the state's largest unions with about 17,000 state employees and about 35,000 workers overall.
Well-known union representatives Leo Canty and Larry Dorman, who appeared on "The Real Story'' television show over the weekend, will also be inside the room.
Canty calculates the projected savings at $22,200 for about 45,000 employees to reach $1 billion.
"That math doesn't work, either, because that's just not the case,'' Canty said, adding that $1 billion is "a very, very big number.''
"It is going to be very difficult to ask middle-class workers, who are trying to just get their small piece of the pie of the American Dream, to give up so much when bankers and CEOs and the super-rich have benefitted,'' Dorman said on the Fox CT show. "You can't keep going back and saying to middle-class workers that 'You're the problem, and it's your standard of living that has to be eroded.' ''
He cited a study that showed that the richest 5 percent in Connecticut received huge benefits from the extension of the Bush tax cuts. As such, the rich should play a larger role in the "shared sacrifice'' that is being requested of workers, he said.
On the administration side, the chief negotiators are expected to deputy budget director Mark Ojakian and labor specialist Linda Yelmini, a longtime state employee who is known for a deep knowledge of labor issues.
After the negotiation on Wednesday, Ojakian and Livingston released a joint statement that said, "The Malloy administration and SEBAC representatives met tonight. We engaged in a respectful and frank discussion. We agreed to continue meeting and that the substance of our meetings would not be discussed in the press. We hope these discussions will be productive and yield positive results.''