Conn. Pension Deal Kicks the Can Down the Road; Calif.’s Costly Prison Health IT Upgrades
The Connecticut State Capitol in Hartford as seen from the Legislative Building. Shutterstock
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also in our State and Local Weekend News Digest: Philly drug overdoses; Georgia voter hack suspected; and Illinois budget mess hits holiday charities.
Here’s what we were reading this weekend …
STATE WORKERS | Unions representing Connecticut state workers came to a deal on Friday with Gov. Dannel Malloy to help ease some of the state’s acute pension pains, but will also kick the can down the road. While the deal will rein in pension costs that would have otherwise spiked over the next 16 years, at least $13.2 billion in estimated pension expenses would be shifted to a future generation. Connecticut’s General Assembly still needs to approve the plan. [CT Mirror]
CORRECTIONS | The cost of a plan to upgrade California’s troubled prison health care recordkeeping system is increasing to nearly $400 million, more than double original cost estimates. "We started out with as cheap a system as we thought we could use, and then along the way there were some things that we decided, 'You know, we absolutely need these, it turns out,'" according to J. Clark Kelso, the federal court-appointed receiver overseeing the state’s inmate health system. [Southern California Public Radio / KPCC]
OPIOIDS | Last week, Philadelphia police reported a spike in overdose deaths; nine people died in 36 hours. Now officials suspect that was just the beginning. All told, 35 people died in just five days. Sam P. Gulino, the city’s chief medical examiner, and others say the can’t think of a cluster of deaths as extreme as this anywhere else in the country. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
HACKING | Did the U.S. Department of Homeland Security try to hack Georgia’s voter registration database? Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, thinks so, after a federal IP address attempted unsuccessfully to breach the state’s firewall. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
RANSOMWARE | Madison County, Indiana plans to spend $220,000 on a ransom and three new IT contracts, after its systems were infected with ransomware on Nov. 4. The contracts cover offsite data storage, a backup court system and additional virus protections. [CSO]
STATE BUDGETS | The ongoing budget mess in Illinois along with a possible state worker strike is having an holiday impact: Charitable donations are down in Springfield. The Salvation Army’s operations in the state’s capital city reports that the 2016 Tree of Lights campaign is 30 percent behind last year’s collections. [The State Register-Journal]
NEXT STORY: How Much Does The Cost of State And Local Public Employees Average Per Hour?