As state employee unions vote between now and Aug. 18 on whether to ratify a slightly revised concession agreement intended to save $1.6 billion over two years and avoid layoffs for four years, legislative Republicans and the Democratic Malloy administration continue to argue about whether the projected savings are real and verifiable.
On Tuesday, House Minority leader Lawrence Cafero issued a statement saying that "roughly half of the money Governor Dannel P. Malloy claims will be saved through the package can't be verified by the state's fiscal authorities" -- and the only option may be "further tax increases" for a middle class already "sucker-punched ... with $1.8 billion in new taxes retroactive to January of this year."
Malloy's director of communications, Colleen Flanagan, responded that the administration's numbers are sound, adding that Republican legislators in Connecticut are acting like their Republican counterparts in Washington -- who, she said, "espouse a doom-and-gloom outlook on everything they can while aggressively working to block the President at every chance they get."
Following are: 1.) the full Cafero press release, as e-mailed Tuesday afternoon to news organizations by Michael Downes, communications manager for House Republicans; 2.) Flanagan's response; 3.) Cafero's response to Flanagan's response, issued late in the afternoon by Downes; and 4.) Flanagan's response to Downes' late-afternoon response to her original response.
