Plummer was one of dozens of workers from the SEIU 1199 union who flooded the state Capitol Wednesday to stand beside Democratic legislators and announce a long-fought agreement.

At her Bloomfield health care center, she struggles to tend to 10 patients per day. Having that large a caseload shortchanges patients and leads to workplace injury, she said.

"We are very much understaffed," she said. She'd need to downsize to one to five patients to make sure each gets adequate care. She found hope Wednesday in a pledge from Democrats -- hopes that may be crushed if it ends up as costly as the governor's budget secretary says.

Democratic leaders are backing a bill that would improve patient care by mandating increased staffing at the state's skilled nursing homes. The current requirement is 1.9 hours of care per resident. The bill would phase in increased staffing mandates to 3.5 hours by Oct. 1; 3.9 hours by Jan. 1 and 4.2 hours by May 1, 2009.

Plummer, and other purple-shirted Certified Nursing Assistants, welcomed the news at the packed press conference in the Legislative Office Building Wednesday afternoon. There are 242 nursing homes statewide. The 1199 union represents 7,000 nursing home workers in the state. About half are CNAs, who give direct care to the patients, lifting them up and helping them walk, bathe, dress and eat.

"The absence of sufficient numbers of well-trained staff in nursing homes is a serious and well-documented problem," testified Toby Eldelman, a health care expert the union rolled out for the event. She said increasing funding to homes has not historically increased staffing-- the best and most effective way to increase staffing was though a mandate.

Democratic leaders Sen. President Donald E. Williams, Speaker of the House Jim Amann, and Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney stood by the union. To fund the new mandate, they put $10 million in the Democratic FY09 budget that passed through the Appropriations Committee Wednesday afternoon.

"Finally," said Sen. Edith Prague (pictured), who's been championing this issue for 10 years. A similar bill has come up, and failed, at least five times before, she said.

Though experts have long agreed staffing mandates needed to be raised, Prague said she couldn't get traction on the issue until crisis hit at one of Connecticut's largest and most prominent nursing home chains, Haven Healthcare.

A series of articles in the Hartford Courant last year exposed a disturbing pattern of poor patient care, including neglecting bedsores and financial instability. The articles incited public outrage and a response from the governor's office.

"If it hadn't been for the Hartford Courant article, I would still be yelling for staffing for nursing homes," Prague said.

Supporters said they thought the bill would be difficult to veto, given the publicity the issue has had in the past year.

Parties squabbled Wednesday, however, over how much the mandate would actually cost.

New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp, who holds the powerful seat of co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats estimated the program would cost $10 million in the first year, then $40 million in subsequent years as the proposal is phased in. Her figures came from the nonpartisan state Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Republicans refuted those numbers and blasted the proposal. In a press statement, Gov. M. Jodi Rell said allocating only $10 million to the nursing home staffing mandate was "the most troubling aspect of their budget proposal." Her budget secretary, Robert Genuario, put the real cost at $157.5 million, assuming staffing hours are increased and staff are paid $22 per hour.

"The mandate has noble goal, but their deliberate underfunding in this program will itself lead to a huge budget hole," Rell said.

In a press conference, Republican legislators said they feared the staffing mandate "could be a big problem," financially, in years to come.