UPDATE the third gubernatorial debate was held Wednesday 9/26/18 at UConn-Storrs. The debate was televised by WFSB-3 and you can watch a video of the debate here. The debate was between three candidates: Oz Griebel, Ned Lamont and Bob Stefanowski. Although state employees were not a main topic of discussion, two of the candidates did call for privatization of specific agencies. Below we present a handful of statements made by the candidates which should be of interest to state employees.
The 4.6 billion dollar deficit will be your very first problem – what first steps will you take in your first 100 days in office to put the state on track to reduce the deficit. Will you raise taxes, eliminate state jobs, call for tolls, eliminate services, whole department? (time reference 4:40)
Griebel: ... starting to lay the groundwork to bring state unions back in 2020 to talk about base compensation and work rules & bring the SEBAC agreement as part of that discussion (6:19)
Stefanowski: ... it is time to make government smaller (8:15)
Lamont ... we need structural reforms to equalize out our pension problems (10:30)
Is there a state agency or department we could live without or fold into another? (50:00)
Lamont: First thing you got to do is take all the back offices from all these different and merge them into one central thing. We have too many departments too many divisions too much redundancy.
Griebel: I’ll say DECD should be privatized
Stefanowski: The Department of Motor Vehicles. Privatize it.