It’s “Back to Work Monday”, a less-than-glorious time in which the many people who married their vacation time to the holiday season now find their break concluded.  For the men and women who will soon make up the renewed State Legislature, they celebrate the less well-known “Two Days Until Back to Work Wednesday”.

Indeed, the newly-elected and duly re-elected will make their pilgrimage to Hartford Wednesday for the start of the Legislative Session.  They return to the corridors of power where a double whammy awaits – continuing deficits for the current fiscal year, and a sea of red ink waiting in the out-years.  Hide your wallets.

The session in the State House will be gavelled into order by new Speaker Chris Donovan of Meriden, the subject of a front-page feature in the Sunday Courant which took up the loathsome task of raising Donovan’s biggest criticism - he’s a radical – and then spent the rest of the article lamely attempting to rebut it.

The reality is that Donovan has been off of the public employees union payroll for like ten minutes now and marauding around in “I’m not radical, I’m practical” clothes is like Chris Farley trying to wear a little coat. 

Don’t be fooled – when Donovan puts that gavel in his hand on Wednesday, it symbolizes a tectonic shift in the House Chamber’s political thought.  Speaker Amann was far more conservative on a host of social and fiscal issues than Donovan, and Amann’s people ran the show. 

The public employees unions’ religious zeal for growing the size of Connecticut’s government - supposedly on the backs of only the rich - is now in bad economic times shown to be as foolish as it was.  It was an Orwellian ‘Big Lie’ and it has propelled its adherents to the top echelons of power, where they are now charged with fixing their own mess.  It’s hard not to be pessimistic.

For the GOP, the November elections sent some bright spots to Hartford – like newly elected Reps. John Rigby, Christopher Coutu, and Tony Hwang – but they are too few.  Republicans face the challenge of better articulating not only what we believe as a Party, but also what we would do differently to make Connecticut work better for everyone. 

In a time when money is tight, we need fiscal responsibility to eliminate from government the functions that are better done in the private sector and get the most out of every tax dollar sent to Hartford.  We need to come up with  plan that ensures every Connecticut resident can access and afford the best health care that money can buy.  We need better solutions on a wide range of issues, and not more of the same answers that got us into the mess in the first place.

It is time for all of us to get back to work.