One day after an agreement to approve nine new judges in return for providing enough funding to prevent the closure of any state courthouse, the deal hit a major roadblock Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, the highest-ranking senator, said he does not want to approve the judges and the funding for the courts until the entire $19 billion budget is approved. Legislators are scrambling to approve the budget before the legislative session ends at midnight on May 5, but no fiscal deal has been reached.<\/p>\n
“I want to see the entire budget for 2011 resolved, not just to resolve it piece meal as to one branch, one agency,” Williams told reporters after a meeting of the top legislative leaders and Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell in her Capitol office. “I think it needs to be part of the entire budget package. We need to resolve it all, not just one branch at a time.”<\/p>\n
The latest development is part of an ongoing stare-down among all three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial. Rell, in her final months as governor, is pushing to get nine judges appointed to the bench, but that cannot happen without approval by the Democratic-controlled legislature.<\/p>\n
Some lawmakers noted that the deal Thursday between the Rell administration and the judicial branch included only the legislature’s powerful judiciary committee. That agreement never included an agreement between the full Democratic legislative leadership – including Williams – and Rell.<\/p>\n
Senate Republican leader John McKinney of Southport criticized Williams, saying there is no reason to hold up the approval of the judges in order to reach an overall budget deal.<\/p>\n
“Today’s meeting, while good in many ways, was one step forward, two steps back,” McKinney said outside the governor’s office as Williams stood a few feet away.<\/p>\n
The legislature, McKinney said, will be essentially handcuffed for the next two weeks if bills related to funding cannot be passed until the entire budget is resolved. Lawmakers, for example, could not vote on the University of Connecticut’s plans for improvements to the financially troubled health center in Farmington because that involves money, he said.<\/p>\n
“Today’s action is a big step backwards in getting an overall budget deal,” McKinney said.<\/p>\n
McKinney hopes an arrangement can be reached in the coming days to avoid a showdown where Williams was “holding those judges hostage to try to get a budget settlement, and that would be extraordinarily unfair to those nine individuals – and unprecedented.”<\/p>\n
Hiring the new judges is necessary, according to Rell and Republicans, because there could be as many as 31 vacancies in the Superior Court by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Under the funding deal that was announced Thursday, three courthouses that would have closed will now remain open. Those are the juvenile courthouses in Norwalk and Willimantic, as well as the state Superior Court in Bristol. The law libraries in Bridgeport, Hartford, and Litchfield – which were slated to close on July 1 – would now remain open.<\/p>\n
The law libraries in Milford, Norwich, and Willimantic, which were all closed on April1, will be reopened under the original deal.<\/p>\n
When asked if the judge-nominees are being held hostage, Rell said, “I have heard that comment, but I will tell you, obviously, everything is working around the budget. … We’ll deal with it, and that includes judges.”<\/p>\n
For the nominees, becoming a judge would be the crowning achievement of their legal lives.<\/p>\n
“I’ll give the benefit to the majority party that they would not play games with people’s lives,” Rell said outside her office. “I don’t think anything is held up or should be held up because we don’t have a budget.”<\/p>\n
The original deal, announced Thursday, between the Rell administration and the judicial branch was designed to prevent the threatened closings of three courthouses. The courts were never closed, but three law libraries were closed as of April 1 because of budget cuts as the state faces its worst fiscal crisis in decades.<\/p>\n
As such, the deal would essentially limit the budget-cutting powers of the governor regarding the judicial budget.<\/p>\n
“We would have to print it as it’s presented to us,” Rell said of the judicial budget.<\/p>\n
In another development Friday, lawmakers discussed whether the proposed early retirement program would need approval from the state employee unions.<\/p>\n
“The best course of action would be to have their blessings,” Rell said.<\/p>\n
House Speaker Christopher Donovan, a longtime union supporter, said that having union support “would be the preferable way to do it.”<\/p>\n
“With regard to the early retirement, it is my opinion that it can be done without the unions’ consent, if you will, because it is not a concession,” said House GOP leader Lawrence Cafero of Norwalk. “I’ve read some case law that would allow that to be offered to them without the unions’ check-off.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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