Council Budget Vote, Plus: Dodd ‘Don’t Mess With My Wife’

3:30 p.m. update Will it be the Monday night fights or just another boring budget session?

The City Council meets tonight to act on Mayor Bill Finch’s proposed spending package for the budget year starting July 1, a revaluation implementation year that features a mixed bag of tax increases, cuts and status quo for taxpayers depending on residential assessments.

Finch’s proposed 39 mil rate has been trimmed modestly to 38.7 by the council’s Budget and Appropriations Committee, according to budget co-chair Bob Curwen, but does not include any drastic cuts to various departments as proposed by a couple of budget committee members. Curwen said the budget committee did not adopt a business tax surcharge opposed by the business community, but he left open the possibility of the council taking up the issue before July 1. Finch is against the tax.

The budget committee, according to Curwen, also voted to increase the mayor’s recommended tax collection rate from 96.18 percent to 96.38 which he says would generate an additional $1.3 million in revenue. Collection rates are tricky, especially if the city cannot collect at a rate it budgets. Stay tuned.

The council’s annual budget vote is often an OIB display of yelling, screaming, charges and counter-charges, but this budget cycle has not been as difficult as last year, when the council rescued city library workers from dramatic cuts, as a result of millions in union concessions achieved by Finch.

This is an election year for council members so incumbents want to be on the campaign trail as shining knights on behalf of taxpayers. Council seats are two-year terms, the mayor runs every four years.

This is, nevertheless, an important budget for Finch who did not want to head into the midway point of his mayoralty with two large citywide taxes increases. It appears whatever yelling the mayor will hear about tax increases will be limited to pockets in the city such as portions in the North End, Black Rock and the Upper East Side, not great but not a disaster considering these chaotic economic times.

Dodd: Leave My Wife Alone

A chivalrous U.S. Senator Chris Dodd defended the honor of his wife in a commentary that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Hartford Courant. Basically, he tells the Courant and any other media outlets that want to pile on to back off his wife whom Courant editorial pages and state GOP leadership have suggested climbed the corporate ladder because of her wedding ring.

See Dodd’s editorial below:

In the past year, my opponents have spent a lot of time attacking me. The people of Connecticut deserve the respect of being presented the truth rather than unchecked partisan rhetoric.

Yes, I have made mistakes, but I have been open and honest about them and I have been working hard to get Connecticut and America’s economy back on track. In fact, we are just days away from winning the fight I have led to crack down on the credit card companies and their abusive practices against consumers.

I’ve been focused on doing my job fighting for you. However, this past week the attacks against me just went too far. The state GOP chairman, Chris Healy, attacked my wife, Jackie. He claimed she served on corporate boards and isn’t qualified. That is a flat-out lie and it’s low-blow politics at its worst.

It has been made even worse by the biased reporting of The Hartford Courant’s newsroom and opinion pages, which seem determined to fan the flames of these attacks without giving credence to the information and resources we provide them.

Here’s the truth.

As a highly educated, professional woman with a long and accomplished career, Jackie is qualified to serve on these boards.

She has a master’s degree in strategic studies from Georgetown University and has been a guest lecturer at universities across the country.

Jackie worked for a Republican senator as an associate on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and as the principal staff member on the banking committee’s Subcommittee on International Finance and Monetary Policy.

From there, she served as chief of staff, vice president for external affairs, vice chairman of the board of directors and first vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the official export credit agency of the U.S. government. In fact, Jackie was the youngest person and the first woman ever to serve in that capacity in the bank’s history.

She accomplished this before we married.

She represented the government as the lead trade finance official on presidential trade missions, developed international experience while beating foreign competition to retain U.S. jobs, and developed a deep understanding of corporate governance, balance sheets and strategic issues.

After government service, Jackie started her own consulting business, and later decided to dedicate her work full time to her boards of directors duties. She has not taken on clients since the birth of our second child.

Jackie also has the background to serve on audit committees. She has previous audit committee experience. She supervised the chief financial officer and she was chairwoman of the loan committee at the Export-Import Bank. And as a board member, she supported financing of more than $50 billion in U.S. exports, approving each transaction through a thorough analysis of financial statements and the creditworthiness of the borrower.

Indeed, her experience qualifies her as a financial expert according to the strict rules established by Sarbanes-Oxley. In fact, this determination is made by the companies, their external auditors and legal counsel – not Jackie.

Why would public corporations take a civil and criminal risk for not adequately exercising their fiduciary duties by designating someone as a financial expert who does not qualify?

Jackie and I have always kept our careers separate and have both gone to great lengths to ensure this. The first thing Jackie did when she entered the private sector was to hire a leading ethics attorney to review every contract and board and to set strict rules against her representing anyone before the government. There are no conflicts of interest.

Short of giving up her career altogether, Jackie has done everything she could to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. She has sought and followed the advice of ethics counsel, she has turned down positions on boards, and she has turned away potential clients.

Jackie and I understand that it is the responsibility of the people of this state to ask questions of its elected leaders. However, it is despicable that the Republican chairman would be lying about my wife’s background and unfairly attacking her.

People will get the facts and see these attacks for what they really are. I’ve dedicated my career to representing the best interests of the people of Connecticut, and I will continue to do so.