Lesser Votes 'NAY' on State Budget

State Representative Matt Lesser talked with The Eye about the just-concluded legislative session, and in particular the State Budget, which passed just before the session closed at midnight Wednesday. He was one of the few Democrats to vote against the budget deal brokered between the Democratic Legislative leadership and Republican Governor Rell.

The Budget passed by a vote of 93 to 57, opposed by all 37 Republicans, and only 20 out of the 114 Democrats in the House. Representatives O'Rourke, Serra, and Hamm each supported the budget bill (SB-494), as did Senators Doyle and Gaffey.

Lesser, a Democrat, is in his first term representing the 100th District, which encompasses parts of southern and western Middletown, along with Durham and Middlefield. I asked him how individual legislators had exerted influence on the budget negotiation process. Lesser said that prior to commencing negotiations, the Democratic leadership asked him for a list of issues important to his constituents, but he said that by necessity, the negotiations with the governor involved only the leadership, "At the end of the day, the leaders were in the room with the governor."

In a Facebook posting, Lesser praised the work that went into the budget, but said that it fell short:

A lot of hard work went into achieving a budget compromise that the Democratic legislature and our Republican Governor could live with. These things are never easy, and I have an enormous amount of respect for the work of my colleagues and the Governor's office in achieving a no-tax-increase balanced budget compromise. ... This is far from the worst budget imaginable, and it may poll well with the public, but I think we could have done a lot better.

Lesser said his biggest concerns were the raiding of specific funds to be used for the general budget, listing electric rate payer funds, money for farm preservation, money for publicly funded campaigns, and the energy efficiency fund. Lesser did not indicate what cuts in expenditures or increases in revenues he would have preferred.

Lesser said that the decision to vote against the budget was not an easy one personally, but he did not get any pressure or criticism from the Democratic leadership. He said they all understand that Democrats represent a wide variety of kinds of districts, "It's always a dilemma, and at the end of the day you have to look at your district."