What has the Connecticut General Assembly and the Governor Wraught?

I thought I spend a little time discussing the budget and other actions our Connecticut government has seen fit to consider and sometimes pass...  Here are my thoughts in no particular order:

• The Governor has said that this was Newtown's Sandy Hook tragedy session.  On that he certainly was correct!
• Earlier this year, Connecticut enacted the toughest gun laws in the country.  I've already blogged about that.  However, in addition, they have made provisions to keep any kind of photograph, video, or 911 call that might evoke an emotional response from having to be disclosed.  So while we've reduced the ability of our law abiding citizenry from defending themselves, we have, at the same time, reduced the citizenry's ability to find out information about perhaps the most powerful of the government's tools - the power to take your life.
• Secrecy continues unabated in the current Malloy administration, given that no one knew that Keno was even on the table as a last minute budget addition.  Well, to be fair, not "no one"... I mean, the Indian tribes knew as there was a secret negotiation prior to it being added to the budget.  So now we'll have restaurants, OTB, convenience stores, and who knows what else collecting money on a numbers racket, without so much as even a public hearing on the topic.  When you have one party rule, who needs pesky public comment?
• Municipalities won't be able to save money by putting legal notices on their websites, rather than having to pay for space in the local newspapers.  The charge against that was led by the newspapers themselves.  The JI had full page ads every issue for weeks at a time.  It staggers the mind how much of an in-kind political donation to themselves this must have been. The price has to be in the 10's of thousands of dollars!  Regardless, the legislature seems content to disadvantage everyone, so long as those who buy ink by the barrel are not.
• Governor Malloy, who decried the closing of budgets with one time revenue streams during his campaigns, resorted to just those types of tactics to close his budget holes.  They've swept clean transportation, landfill, and clean energy accounts to manage to "balance" the budget.
• Not content with this broken promise, he doubled down on his plan to move to GAAP accounting for the State's budget by, you guessed it, BORROWING money to pay for the conversion!
• The biggest budget question remaining is: is it enough?  And what I mean by this is what, if any, provisions in the budget will end up becoming the Governor's second "suggestion box" approach.  Will shortfalls in revenue projections happen?  Will spending exceed that which was budgeted?  If so, we'll need to close that hole next year... and next year is an election year.  I'm betting the Governor has his fingers crossed, and maybe his toes too.

Of course, I've focused on the negative.  But here's the positive:  An Act Concerning Government Administration.  Included in it is:

• The Ballroom Polka will be the state polka
• The song entitled "Beautiful Connecticut Waltz", composed by Joseph Leggo of Newington, shall be the second state song.
• And my favorite of them all, that the Governor shall designate a day called Powered Flight Day, proclaiming that Gusave Whitehead was the first man to engage in a sustained powered aircraft flight, thus displacing the Wright Brothers as the inventors of powered flight!

Clearly the Governor and the General Assembly have done their duty to the great State of Connecticut!
(Just don't tell North Carolina)