Now is the time we hear on the news that, for example, Illinois has not had a budget in three years, the finger pointing, the observation that congress is responsible but not accomplished in many states.
So I looked why. I hypothesize it has to do with the numbers of state employees per capita. For example Indiana has 46 state employees per 10,000 people, or .46 % of the population is paid by the state. But Connecticut has 115 or 1.15% more than double. https://tinyurl.com/pbgngn8
The most interesting to me is 80% of the Connecticut budget is personnel (including pensions), grants (towns and benefits like medicaid), and debt service. https://tinyurl.com/yctuht55
Indiana approved a 2 year state budget in February, Connecticut still doesn’t have a budget and will now go to budget by executive order.
Not that it would be easy to cut more than half of the state employees. Indiana has a higher incarceration rate than Connecticut. We have 1 full time teacher per 12 pupils through all grade levels, and Indiana has 17, which is probably not a good thing but does save the taxpayers some money. In Indiana and Connecticut a little more than 40% of the education staff are teachers.
Indiana has 6.6 million people compared with 3.6 for Connecticut, and Indiana’s budget is $32 billion and the budget CT cannot pass is $21 billion. On surprise I ran across was more than double in CT for judicial Indigent Services, public defenders, than in Indiana. So I went through out budget and this is where it gets complicated to compare with Indiana. Connecticut spends money on lots of employee salaries related to the Judicial Industry. Below is a list I made from this web site http://transparency.ct.gov/html/searchpayroll.asp
Attorney General $42.6 million
Department of Correction $605.7 million
Department of Public Safety $218.8 million
Criminal Justice $65.4 million
Judicial Department $468 million
Public Defender Services $56 million
Nearly 1.5 billion dollars is spent in Connecticut, 25% of the total budget, directly on crime and punishment.
It would certainly be easier and cheaper and better for everyone if we focused on education and tolerance of others, and of course, removing violence instead of all the other things we prohibit.
Libertarians say Don’t Tread On Anyone.