Short-lived try for transparency

Transparency, we hardly knew ye. Shortly after his inauguration on Jan. 5, Gov. Dannel Malloy issued his first executive order, calling for the establishment of an accurate and transparent accounting system for state government, just as he had promised in his campaign. There was no mistaking its importance to Malloy.But it’s not going to happen. Like past governors and legislatures, the Malloy Democrats have discovered they can’t produce a budget using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, known as GAAP. There’s the little matter of $1.35 or $1.5 billion, the amount GAAP would add to the projected deficit for the coming year. Honesty and transparency go just so far. So, welcome back, smoke and mirrors. Most voters had never heard of GAAP until Malloy clearly and repeatedly explained how it was the only honest way to account for their money. He told them GAAP would end an array of generally unacceptable accounting gimmicks that allowed past governors and legislatures to move current expenses into the future and use revenues received this year to balance the books from last year. That, Malloy said, wouldn’t do when he was governor. He would put a stop to it with all deliberate speed.Interestingly, one of the first political observers to predict GAAP wouldn’t happen was the disgraced former governor John Rowland. “GAAP will never see the light of day,” Rowland told his radio listeners just days after Malloy’s election last November. This prompted a quick phone call from the governor-elect to correct Rowland and promise “the state will go cold turkey” to reform its accounting. He didn’t say anything about keeping the turkey around until 2013.As a centerpiece of his campaign, GAAP probably helped Malloy get elected. I know that after 16 years of watching Republican governors and Democratic legislatures working together in the creation of phony budgets, I was impressed with Malloy’s promise of transparency, especially so when it became the first order of business of Jan. 5.“Executive Order No. 1 by his excellency Dannel P. Malloy,” issued on Inauguration Day, gave the Office of Management and Budget two months to adopt a plan for GAAP conversion, which, by my reckoning, should have been completed on or about March 5. But now there’s no hurry. Deep in the budget is language that allows the governor to postpone his promise of accounting reform to 2013 or maybe never. It all came down to whether the administration wanted honest accounting or more than a billion or so added to the deficit, which inflation will make larger by 2013. And so, after what I assume was prayer and reflection, it has been determined that conversion to GAAP would require “a level of sacrifice that wasn’t necessary,” said Benjamin Barnes, the director of the governor’s Office of Policy and Management. Sacrifice, yes, but not this much.The administration and legislative leadership were also shocked, yes shocked, to discover “there are financial managers in every state agency who have never operated under a GAAP environment. You have to train these people.” That’s the argument of Rep. Tom Reynolds, a Democratic member of the Appropriations Committee, who claims GAAP isn’t delayed, but merely undergoing an orderly implementation process. I guess we all misunderstood that this was something that was going to happen now. Voters can be so careless. In hindsight, candidate Malloy should have introduced GAAP to the voters as a concept he was interested in pursuing when he was in office. He could have presented it as a vision thing, something to be achieved once the more immediate need to deal with the deficit was accomplished. Malloy’s problem was making such a big deal of GAAP, convincing the citizenry it was so badly needed for good governing and then failing to deliver. It was a case of trying for too much, too soon. Leaders do that sometimes. Ask Barack Obama. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less