It's hard to say who staged the more audacious stunt, MGM, in having a groundbreaking in Bridgeport for a casino never even proposed to lawmakers, or Gov. Dannel Malloy and UConn President Susan Herbst, in their Monday news conference faking a possible closing of the university's Avery Point campus in Groton.

I found it remarkable in the first place that Malloy and Herbst found the time to travel to Groton, in the midst of the state's lingering budget crisis, to wring their hands for the media about the Republican budget that passed the General Assembly.

After all, at least Republicans passed a budget.

There were so many things dishonest about the news conference, I find it hard to wrap my brain around it all.

First, why was the university president participating with the governor in what was clearly a partisan attack?

Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano said later that Herbst ought to be fired if she can't work with a budget she's given. He's got that right, and the university president ought to pay attention, and watch her back, now that she's chosen sides in a sharply divided Capitol, where the balance of power may toggle to the other party.

And then there was the bogus underlying narrative of the news conference, the suggestion that the Republican budget cuts for UConn could require closing the Avery Point campus. That's just not true.

The cuts are big, from $244 million to more than $300 million, depending how you calculate, but the Democrats, too, have proposed cutting $100 million. There is absolutely no specific budget plug being pulled for Avery Point in either proposal.

The university administration could of course propose closing Avery Point, but they didn't present any numbers-driven analysis of how it would work and how the savings would compare to other cuts that could be made.

It was a stage threat from Malloy and Herbst, classic posturing at budget time, choosing scary targets to suggest eliminating to win hearts and minds. I'd like to see it backfire.

Clearly Herbst and Malloy weren't going to have a news conference to talk about how the GOP cuts to the UConn budget were going to require cuts to the school's bloated administration or less spending on the university president's two mansions.

If Herbst is going to earn her salary, which places her 12th among state university presidents, she should adapt to Connecticut's budget crisis that is certainly going to cut benefits for state workers, eliminate a lot of social programs that do a lot of good and raise taxes for all of us.

It was Malloy who coined the term "shared sacrifice" at the outset of the state's budget spiral downward. The state's top paid educator ought to learn it.

Malloy seemed almost Trumpian to me in the way he chose a debate over public policy to launch a vindictive attack on an old nemesis, someone on the other ticket in his last race for governor.

Malloy not only made the effort to travel all the way to the hometown of state Sen. Heather Somers, apparently to embarrass her, but he called her out specifically in the news conference, saying she voted for a budget that could put the campus in the heart of her district on the chopping block.

The governor's disingenuous attack made me almost feel a little sorry for the Republican senator from Groton, whose win of the seat in the last election evened the party balance in the state Senate.

It's hard not to wonder if attacking Somers wasn't some of the reason Groton took such a hard hit in the governor's proposals for reduced school aid.

It's shameful that the governor is so busy at political posturing at a time when municipal leaders around the state are walking the ledge of this uncertain state budget, unsure how far they might fall.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com