Dan Haar: A Scary Look At The State’s 4,200 Threatened Layoffs
Dan Haar, Hartford Courant, May 17, 2017
What would 4,200 state employee layoffs look like? It’s scary, and not just for targeted workers and the people who depend on the services they deliver.
Eliminating that number of jobs would, by itself, go a long way toward collapsing a state economy that’s already weak. But 4,200 is the number that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has put on the table as a likely cut if state employee unions don’t agree to $700 million in concessions.
And legislators agree with the concession target for the simple reason that the hole is $2.3 billion this year and more than that in 2018-19 — the result of debt, pension and health care liabilities that have built up over the decades, not agency spending.
