Susan Keane spent four decades shaping fiscal policy in Connecticut. This will be the first year the General Assembly will convene without her since 1983.

WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf to discuss his article, “Susan Keane, champion of open budgeting in CT, calls it a career,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Keith’s story here.

WSHU: Hello, Keith. Over the years, most of us have turned to you to help explain the intricacies of Connecticut state budgets. So it’s fascinating to hear about Susan Keane, the person behind the scenes who helped shape Connecticut budgets for more than four decades. She was your guide to understanding the state’s budget. Tell us about Susan and about how you first met her.

KP: Well, I first met Susan Keane back in the early 1990s, 1993 to be exact, when I was literally just in my first session trying to understand how the Appropriations Committee works. I think a lot of reporters tend to think, Well, the first thing I have to do is get to know the legislators. But what I learned early on is that good, non-partisan staff are what make every committee work. They’re the folks who handle the records, who gathered the research for legislators, who organized the meetings. And it was Susan Keane who first really showed me how that process worked. And it took me a while to realize how much I was benefiting just from how seriously she took that process.

WSHU: Now, you say that she kept things on track; she pretty much kept things moving. And crafting a budget is a very complicated business. Could you just tell us what goes into it and how she was able to keep on top of it?

KP: I can tell you what goes into it, if you want me to explain how she was able to pull it off — I still haven’t learned. It’s a very long process. We tend to think most folks, when they think of the budget, of the budget or the state budget, they just think of a book or the money that’s spent, but really it’s, it’s the product of months and months of work. The legislature’s Appropriations Committee, which has roughly 50 members, one of the largest committees, has a dozen subcommittees, and at any given time, its members can also be assigned to different task forces. They will, over the course of about two to two and a half months, be conducting dozens of hearings, not just the committee proper, but all of the different subcommittees. They break the budget down, and one subcommittee will deal with human services, and another with transportation, and so on. And I mean, most news organizations have one or two folks covering the capital. You can’t even get to all those meetings, so you’ve got to be able to go back, look at the minutes, and try to figure out what’s important. Meanwhile, in some sessions, hundreds of bills move through a committee, all of which, if they have any fiscal impact, ultimately become part of the budget. The fact that Susan has a system that allows you to get that information pretty much at your fingertips is amazing.

WSHU: Well, that’s really amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about Susan, the person. How did she get into this in the first place?

KP: Susan sort of got into it by accident. She was attending the University of Hartford. She wasn’t intending to work in government, but there was an opportunity for an internship at the state capitol. State Representative at the time in the late 1970s, Tom Serrani of Stamford, picked her for that internship, and within two years, he had asked her to run the Transportation Committee. A few more years after that, her mentor insisted that she apply for an opening with the Appropriations Committee, and she very quickly, not only got the job, but developed a close friendship with the house chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee at the time, a state representative named Janet Polinski, who really instilled in Susan a deep appreciation for open government.

WSHU: Now, you know, you say that she did not particularly care for the Appropriations Committee. She felt it was something that would be difficult for her to understand. How did she warm up to it?

KP: Well, what she said originally was, because Susan’s very loyal, and she was working on the Transportation Committee, and she noticed that the Appropriations Committee killed a lot of their bills, meaning whatever the Transportation Committee legislators were asking for money. The way Susan recalled it, appropriation said no, but I think appropriation, some folks call it the feeling committee. It is really where, probably more than any other committee, the public consistently reaches out. I mean, the average person may never testify in their life before the General Assembly, or maybe once or twice, but when you get that issue, that drives you to the point where you may want to drive to Hartford, or nowadays, thanks to Susan Keane, there are sometimes opportunities to testify online, or even if you submit something in writing, usually there’s dollars attached to it, which means, sooner or later, it goes through the Appropriations Committee, and I think, dealing with the public and seeing how people needed a way to connect with their legislators. And Susan saw herself as the facilitator of that connection, and I think that’s what drew her to the job and kept her on the job.

WSHU: How did she make that process open to the general public? What exactly did she do?

KP: Again, so many ways. I’ll just give you a few examples. Okay, if there were challenges in testifying. Let’s say you were a community college student, and you really wanted to talk to the General Assembly about some cutbacks, but just because of your classes, nine to five wasn’t working, Susan would find a way to make sure that there might be evening hours. There were instances, at times, where folks with mental illness, perhaps because of anxiety or other issues, really had trouble staying in a crowded room, so she’d have different procedures to stagger the testimony. Traditionally, a lot of times, committees let public officials go more quickly than the general public. Susan reversed it the other way and said, okay, the folks who have the mental health needs, we’ll take care of them. First, one of the things, if you’ll permit me, though, I want to also point out, as a member of the media, that was huge. You know, if you’re trying to cover an issue, it’s hard enough, it’s complicated enough. But if legislators are discussing a document, say a draft section of a portion of the budget, and you want to follow along. It’s hard enough to follow the discussion, but imagine if you’re following it and you don’t have a copy of the document they’re discussing. Now you might get it afterward. But Susan made sure you could get it while they were talking about it. She said, I know reporters will be coming to me saying, Can I get a copy so I know when they turn to page 43, What the heck is on page 43. Susan already had copies ready. She had an organized process to make sure the copies didn’t run out.

WSHU: Wow, I can really identify with that. You say that during COVID, she took the helm and made it possible for the hybrid hearing system to be developed, where you would have online people testifying online. Could you just tell us a little bit about how that evolved and how she took charge of that?

KP: Susan had been involved for years in taking the lead on training legislative staff, new legislators, providing an orientation for them, and assisting lobbyists to try to understand how the process works. So it was natural that during the coronavirus pandemic, when the pandemic struck, legislative leaders turned to her to basically say, please take the lead and try to set up a process. I mean, we’ve always had, I shouldn’t say, always, for a long time now there’s been the Connecticut Network, the internet news and cable news system for the legislature, and they have most of the hearing rooms in the Legislative Office Building wired for sound, and there are cameras, but it’s not interactive. You can watch something on CT-n, but it’s not like you can speak to legislators through your computer screen. So we had to set up with, you know, remote technology systems.

And I’m not saying like, for example, that. Susan Keane invented Zoom. But if you think about it, the legislature has very specific rules, for example, on how you conduct a meeting and how you vote, and you can’t just assume Jane Doe voted, because I think I heard some sound in the ether, and Susan set up a process to keep the things going, keep the debates going, keep the votes going, where folks would have to almost like, I think I compared it to a game of Simon Says. First, Simon says, turn on your computer camera, show your face. Then Simon says, state your full name. Then Simon says, state how you’re going to vote. Then wait to make sure the committee administrator has confirmed it. And at the beginning, folks continue to forget what Simon said and Sue with without ever any arrogance, would gently, sort of steer them back, go through it all. She also set up tons, most folks don’t even know of YouTube channels for General Assembly committees, which also creates another record. So if you miss a meeting, you can go back. Say you just wanted to watch. But for some reason, the event wasn’t on the Connecticut Networks’ main news feeds. You could find it on YouTube.

And just one last point, I’m sorry to drag this out. This system is still very much in play. There will be a lot of hybrid meetings. Most meetings now are hybrid, where some folks are in attendance, some aren’t. There will be times when the legislature, a legislative committee, really can’t schedule enough votes unless they have remote attendance, and it makes committee meetings so much more efficient, because you can gather them relatively quickly, because folks don’t all have to drive in from Hartford.

WSHU: Now you say that Susan will be missed at the Capitol for her Irish wit and fiery red hair, not to mention a deep appreciation of music and dance. Could you tell us about the music and dance aspect?

KP: Well, she was an Irish step dancer as a child, actually very accomplished at that in the 80s and 90s. And I’m feeling old here, because I definitely remember the 90s with the General Assembly session, and there was a really big party after midnight, after they gaveled out. And Susan always enjoyed her dance. Her knowledge of music, though, is staggering. I mean, like I said, if you want to talk classical, if you want to talk big band, if you want to talk hip hop, if you want to talk 70s pop, or 70s funk, or 80s pop. It does not matter. Susan Keane is right there with you.

WSHU: And you say she will always be remembered for her laughter and sense of humor.

KP: Yes, Susan certainly was always very focused on the job. But there were a few times when, if we let’s put it this way, she never shortchanged a laugh. Susan did not. There was not a little mild chuckle. If she was going to laugh, she committed full-scale. She commits full scale to that laugh.

WSHU: Well, thank you so much, Keith. I really appreciate this behind-the-scenes look at the administrative staff that makes the Capitol work.