Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Bysiewicz and Lamont Governor Ned Lamont does not hear the screams, possibly because his ears are cocked in the wrong direction. Within the space of a couple of weeks, Lamont decided to open hair salons, to order hair salon owners not to use blow dryers, to reverse his order concerning blow dryers in the case of African American women, because the hair of African Americans is different than that of white women and requires blow drying before satisfied clients leave the salon, and finally to delay the heralded opening of hair salons because, we are told by Ken Dixon of the Hearst papers , “The plan to have them open on Wednesday with other retail businesses was abandoned over the weekend, after Lamont conferred with Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who is keeping close-contact businesses closed for the time being.”

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is not a sentiment often heard in Connecticut’s General Assembly. Nor is it often heard in the state’s media, besieged relentlessly with press releases issued by forked-tongued legislators. The tolling draft-bill that may soon be approved by the General Assembly on a party line vote is the usual “rush job,” even though Democrats certain to vote in favor of the bill knew it was coming down the pike shortly after Ned Lamont had been elected Governor in January, 2019, a year ago. The latest draft omits language in other versions that assigned the authority to raise toll rates to the legislature, where it belongs, and instead confers the authority to raise taxes – or “user fees” as artful Democrats would prefer -- to an unelected, and therefore irreproachable, newly formed Transportation Policy Council. This abdication of responsibility relives legislators of their constitutionally assigned “getting and spending” powers. ...

Ned Lamont There are both advantages and disadvantages to chief executives elected to office from outside the political box. One of the greatest disadvantages relates to political navigation. Asked about Governor Ned Lamont’s first year in office, Republican leader in the State Senate Len Fasano said, “It’s a lack of understanding in that building that has been an impediment to the governor closing the deal” on transportation. “I think the business principles and brains are of value, but they are nullified if you can’t navigate the building.” On the matter of transportation, Lamont’s two pilot fishes in the General Assembly are President of the State Senate Martin Looney and House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz. The Democrat majority in the General Assembly is headed by Looney, a fixture in the General Assembly for 26 years, and Aresimowicz, a union employee fearful of fouling his own nest.

Thomas Hooker After Governor Ned Lamont had signed a budget that Republican leaders in the state House and Senate insist is woefully out of balance and therefore unconstitutional, a eupeptic Lamont said this: “For years, instability in the state’s finances has resulted in slow growth and volatility in our economy — and this budget was adopted with a focus on providing the foundation from which our state can grow,” Lamont said. “When the fiscal year closes, Connecticut will have the largest rainy day fund in history and this budget maintains and grows our reserves, providing reliability and predictability for our taxpayers, businesses, and those looking to invest in our state well into the future.” Republicans Len Fasano and Themis Klarides are likely right. The Lamont-Looney-Aresimowicz budget depends upon tax receipt projections that are, to put it mildly, fanciful.   The budget hawks at  CTMirror   tell us, “The new  $43.4 billion, two-year plan  “ recen...

Following a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders of the General Assembly, the question before the house being tolls, Governor Ned Lamont was asked by a reporter how things went. Lamont answered, “Well, as they say after those State Department summits, I’d say we had frank and honest discussions,” meaning the bipartisan needle had not moved forward. Republicans, and likely much of the state, do not want tolls. “’No, we don’t support tolls, period,’ said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven,” in a CTMirror account. “He added that he believes Senate Democrats would not call a vote on tolls without some Republican support, an assertion Senate Democratic leaders would not confirm or dispute.” President Pro Tem of the state Senate Martin Looney -- along with Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, both legislative goalies -- was asked to comment on the frank and honest discussions. “’I would not comment on that directly until we have a caucus,’ said Senate P...

Democrats put off a vote on tolling during the recently concluded legislative session because, plain and simple, they did not have the votes to pass a tolling bill. But hope springs eternal. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz thought he may have had the votes to pass the measure in the House, but passage was still an iffy proposition. Mark Pazniokas writes in the Hartford Business Journal , “Aresimowicz’s comments reflect a belief among lawmakers that the Lamont administration botched the rollout of tolls in February, giving Republicans, the trucking industry and others an opportunity to frame tolls as just another demand on residents.”

Themis Klarides, the leader of a much reduced Republican contingent in the Connecticut House of Representatives, is fair-minded, but not the sort of woman who will suffer fools – and, more importantly, political frauds – gladly. She may allow two strikes, but three strikes and you’re out. Very early on, Klarites drew a bead on the Malloy administration, which sought to marginalize Republican influence over political affairs by loudly shutting the door on Republicans such as Klarides. A shrewd judge of character, she carefully catalogued the quills Governor Dannel Malloy had been throwing about. Malloy had described himself as a bristly porcupine, a self-designation that stuck and struck because it was inconveniently true.   As a Republican leader in the House, Klarides did not suffer gladly Malloy’s lordly indifference. It was either Malloy’s way, Republican leader in the Senate Len Fasano noted early in Malloy’s first term, or the highway. But then, what is the po...

We are fast approaching “V Day,” vote day here in Connecticut, on November 6. Republicans are punching through the mask, Governor Dannel Malloy, to hobble the gubernatorial ambitions of Ned Lamont who, along with Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bob Stefanowski, has had little direct political experience. Connecticut Commentary has styled this “the Junior Varsity campaign.” The first string team – Malloy himself, his Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, along with other possible experienced Democrat prospects for governor such as Comptroller   Kevin Lembo – is sitting on the back bench. It would not be too fanciful to suggest that Democrats have not fielded their strong team for two principal reasons: 1) Malloy has sunk to a new low in his favorability rating, 15 percent, which suggests that his policies have failed the state, and 2) it may be prudent to wait until the storm of disapproval has passed; there is always tomorrow.

The Hartford Courant story is titled, provocatively, 'Racist' Tweet From Republican Joe Visconti Draws Fire From Democratic and GOP Leaders . The word “racist” is imprisoned in quotes to indicate some disagreement as to whether the perennial right of center gadfly, Joe Visconti, is a racist. He is not a racist, those who know him best will assert, rather passionately. Visconti has argued that his message, appended to a picture of Democrat Attorney General prospect William Tong, has little to do with race and everything to do with political orientation.

S&P Global Ratings has lowered Connecticut’s rating one notch from A+ to A. Credit analyst David Hitchcock provided a list of reasons justifying the downgrade. Hitchcock noted, according to a CTMirror story , that Connecticut has one of the highest per capita debt ratios in the nation, having ended the last fiscal year with a taxpayer bonded debt approaching 24 billion. The state has been struggling with ways to provide support for its poorly funded municipal teachers’ pension program. Connecticut, according to Hitchcock, “has a history of deficit financing during recessions.” Connecticut has yet to recover fully from a recession that official ended several years ago. The state’s emergency budget reserve is dangerously low at $210 million, according to Hitchcock, an amount just larger than 1 percent of annual General Fund operating costs. CTMirror reports that “Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo recommends a reserve of 15 percent.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s Nominee for Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, Justice Andrew McDonald, was sent to the General Assembly with a negative recommendation. The nomination  passed in the House by one vote, where Democrats have a six member edge over Republicans, and is now headed towards the Senate, which is split 18-18 among Democrats and Republicans. The Republican leader in the Senate, Len Fasano, said on a radio talk show recently that he is inclined to vote down the nomination.  After viewing all McDonald's opinions -- and also interviewing McDonald -- Fasano feels that McDonald is prone to affirming a possibly flawed decision if the decision contains a partial narrative that supports his apriori views. For instance, McDonald believes that the death penalty may be racist because it falls disproportionately on blacks, a doubtful datum. If a decision to abolish the death penalty supported that view, McDonald would be inclined to support it. That mo...

When Democrat and Republican leaders announced they had produced a bipartisan budget, details to be released in two days, a Hartford paper lamented in a page one, top of the fold headline, “State Budget Negotiations: Talks Turn Bitter.” Sorry, but no. Virtually all Democrat and Republican caucus leaders, closeted together for more than a week hammering out a compromise budget, agreed that their talks were cordial, business-like, productive and remarkably free of animosity. The compromise budget passed the Senate by a veto-proof majority of 33-3, and there was much fist-bumping in the House when the budget passed in the chamber by a veto-proof 126-23 majority.

Just a gigolo, everywhere I go People know the part I'm playing Paid for every dance Selling each romance Every night some heart betraying There will come a day Youth will pass away Then what will they say about me When the end comes I know They'll say just a gigolo As life goes on without me Approaching the end of his second term as Connecticut Governor, Dannel Malloy has been bounced from the budget negotiating room. In some quiet corner of the Connecticut political barracks, Republicans must have been murmuring to each other, “How does it feel?”

Q: You believe the state of Connecticut is in crisis. A: Yes, and I’m not alone. There are two crises; the state itself, by which I mean its people and businesses, is in crisis; and state government, sometimes mistaken for the state, also is in crisis. To a certain extent, the first crisis is driven by the second. Q: These two are not the same? A: They are never the same. Lincoln spoke of a government of, by and for the people, but if you pause over that formulation and think about it, you will discover the two are not the same. In a perfect representative system, differences between the two are slight; state government and the larger, real state are close cousins. But that can never be the case in a republic in which government operates by force. This is the present condition in Connecticut, and the state has been in this mode for a long while. We have had single party government in the General Assembly, Connecticut’s lawmaking body, for almost half a century. When the...

The Great Compromise will compromise everyone but Connecticut’s lame-duck Governor and an insensate Democrat dominated General Assembly. A front page, top of the fold headline in a Hartford paper blares, “ Time For Compromise ,” and a sub-heading trumpets, “Malloy Offers Plan With New Tax Hikes, Republicans Scoff.” Unsurprisingly – because Democrats are up to their old hat tricks – the Malloy plan includes onerous tax increases, the sort of whips and scorns that have made of Connecticut a no-man’s-land for companies that in the past have moved from high to low tax states. The “no tax increase,” lame duck Governor has, right on cue, called for “compromise.”  Said Malloy, after having successfully rebuffed during his entire two term administration Republican reforms targeting the state’s permanent, long-term spending problems, “The time for compromise is now” – now that dissenting voices have been rendered mute. “This,” Malloy said of his current budget iteration, “is the ...

It may not be too early to provide a brief autopsy on the Malloy administration, even though the patient is still flopping on the table. After two terms in office, Governor Dannell Malloy has decided to throw in the towel. He will not be running for re-election in 2018, which is not to say Republicans and Democrats will not be running against Malloy. Some Democrats will be running away from Malloy with their pants on fire, and he likely will serve Republicans as a bludgeon deployed against Democrats in the campaign.

The SEBAC-Malloy-Aresimowicz agreement passed in the state House, moved to the State Senate and was affirmed there on a party line vote, Republicans opposing the backroom deal in both chambers of the General Assembly. Hours before the Senate vote, leading Democrats, who have not  yet  submitted a budget, warned opposition party members that the earth would tumble into the sun if the SEBAC “concession” deal did not pass.

Below is a key note address delivered to the Bethel Republican Town Committee during their lobsterfest. My thanks to Bill Hillman, who invited me to speak, and everyone present who was kind enough to hear me out. A good time was had by all, except for the lobsters. Atheists In Ireland When Bill Buckley – who lived in Connecticut nearly all his life, first in Sharon and later in Stamford – went to Ireland for the first time, he did what most Irish Americans do on their first trip to the land of saints. He visited dusty old churches and examined dusty old records to uncover his family’s roots. Then he went on a pub crawl.

For more than a month, Democratic leaders in Connecticut’s General Assembly had been able to postpone a vote on a two year Democratic budget. Democrats did not bring their own budget to the floor for consideration, debate or a vote because they had no budget. Indeed, legislative Democrats avoided presenting a budget until the completion of secret so called “concession” talks with the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) had been concluded. The legislature officially closed down for business on June 7 and no budget had been brought forward, even though Republicans had been pressuring Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz to bring to the floor their own budget, which contained some impressive reform proposals. The fiscal year ended on June 30 without debate on a budget. On July 18, Democratic leaders bestirred themselves hours after rank and file members of the state’s employee unions had voted favorably on the concession deal struck between Malloy and SEBAC. The rapid...

From this point forward, most of the media releases from the Malloy administration will be in the form of a hidden confession, followed by an unintentionally amusing uptick. After an announcement by Mother Aetna that the company is moving its headquarters from Connecticut to another state, possibly New York, CTMirror unfurled its headline: “ Aetna CEO: HQ move to have ‘minimal impact’ on most Hartford employees ." The headline over a Wall Street Journal editorial was somewhat darker: “ Connecticut’s Tax Comeuppance: With the rich tapped out, the state may resort to Puerto Rico bonds .