Attorney General George Jepsen ruled on Thursday that under certain emergency circumstances, the General Assembly can make changes to existing union contracts.

The opinion gave Republicans some traction heading into the scheduled Monday vote in the state Senate on $1.5 billion in union concessions. But Democrats including Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz and Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney agreed that the opinion is further support for the pending deal with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition.

The agreement, engineered over six months by unions and Malloy’s negotiating team, narrowly passed the House on Monday after winning overwhelming ratification among rank-and-file workers earlier this month.

“…Not all modifications of contractual benefits will impair a contract, and whether a particular modification constitutes an impairment will depend on the specific language of the contract at issue and the legislation that modifies it,” Jepsen wrote.

Jepsen culminates the opinion with a warning that rewriting exiting union contracts could raise major constitutional questions.

Warning about ‘impairments’

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In reaction, Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, and House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said Thursday that the opinion essentially gives a green light to their budget proposals, which drew fire from Democrats for allegedly being a union-busting vehicles.

“What the AG’s opinion demonstrates is our budget, clearly without a doubt, is perfectly fine,” Fasano said in an interview. “It does nothing with pensions and health care until after 2022,” the current contract’s expiration date. The concessions approved 78-72 in the House on Monday would extend the contract with state unions until 2027.

Jepsen’s eight-page assessment concludes that unilateral contractual changes would likely result in uncertain court battles.

“Ultimately, to the extent that the budget proposals that you identify in your letter impair existing contracts between the State and its employees, those impairments would raise substantial constitutional questions under the Contract Clause,” Jepsen warned, citing a 1989 ruling as precedent.

“The AG’s opinion is quite clear and no amount of spin will change what this opinion actually means,” Malloy said in a mid-afternoon statement. “Despite the political rhetoric from those wishing to defeat the SEBAC agreement and undermine collective bargaining, the facts are the facts. And the fact is, the legal opinion offered by the Attorney General Jepsen stresses that substantial constitutional questions remain with respect to certain Republican proposals to alter portions of state employee collective bargaining agreements.”

Missed budget deadlines

Looney, D-New Haven, said that Jepsen’s opinion “highlights” the potential constitutional dangers in the proposals of House and Senate Republicans. “Using this opinion as ammunition for their attack on workers’ rights is an intentional misinterpretation of the attorney general’s cautionary statement and an attempt to shoehorn this opinion to fit their anti-worker ideology.”

“The legal principles under the Contract Clause have not significantly changed since 1989,” Jepsen responded, “although several cases have applied those principles in different factual contexts, with varying results.” He said that changing active contracts depend on the “severity of the fiscal crisis,” the state’s behavior negotiating contracts; and the extent that the state has studied alternatives.

The state’s projected $5 billion budget shortfall in the two-year, nearly $40 billion budget that had been scheduled to start July 1, has stymied lawmakers for months. The General Assembly first missed its June 7 budget deadline, then failed to reach a compromise budget by the end of the 2016-17 fiscal year on June 30.

Malloy has been keeping the state on a bare-bone budget this month under his executive powers. He and Democrats, with a 79-72 margin in the House and an 18-18 tie in the Senate, see the $1.5 billion in union concessions as a crucial part of addressing the deficit.

KDixon@ctpost.com; Twitter: @KenDixonCT