Horse Guards Not on the Cut List in Malloy's Latest Budget Strategy

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy released a new budget reduction strategy Friday that, if passed, will keep both the First and Second Company Governor's Horse Guards intact and fully funded.

"We're confident the concession package will be approved and that the Horse Guard should be able to continue for the foreseeable future," Gian-Carl Casa, undersecretary for legislative affairs in the state Office of Policy Management, wrote in an email to Patch on Saturday.

The decision on whether to keep, consolidate or cut the Horse Guards has gone back and forth in the past few months, leaving both units uncertain about their fates.

Malloy released the latest budget reduction strategy, also known as Plan C, on Friday. In it, neither the First nor Second Company is listed among the cuts. If lawmakers pass the plan, that means both Horse Guards units will stay with fully restored budgets for the next two years under the proposed 2011-12 and 2012-13 biennium budget. Each unit would receive $78,632 next year in funding, if fully restored.

Until then, the Horse Guards are waiting for the official word.

The new budget reduction strategy depends on a concession agreement with state unions, which has not yet been ratified.

"The only thing that needs to happen now is for the SEBAC agreement to be ratified in a timely fashion," Malloy said in a press release Friday. "If it isn’t, we’re back to Plan B – something I don’t think anyone wants."

So that does not mean that the Horse Guards are entirely safe. The elimination of both the Avon and Newtown Horse Guard units is listed as one of the proposed possibilities in Plan B.

The remaining savings in the proposal are $1 billion for budgeted labor management lapse, $700 million for SEBAC agreements and $259,410,171 for impact on budgeted surplus. That amount added to the $40,589,829 in the Plan C reduction strategy, that equals the $2 billion needed to balance the budget. 

A PDF of Malloy's budget adjustment proposal is uploaded to this article.