Running for the Democratic Party nod against Bruce Morrison,
Mr. Cibes argued that the deficit and Connecticut’s parlous economic climate
made it impossible for the state to raise the sales tax, then among the highest
in the nation, or business taxes. An income tax was inevitable. ''The public,” Mr. Morrison retorted, “should
beware of people who want to increase their taxes and call it reform.”
Mr. Cibes lost
the primary – no surprise, really, since most Democrats from time immemorial
had been income tax averse – and Mr. Weicker won 40 percent of the vote on
Election Day, defeating both Republican John Rowland, who hauled in 37 percent
of the vote, and Mr. Morrison. Although Mr. Weicker lost Fairfield and New
Haven counties, he received strong support from the Hartford metro area after
having been robustly endorsed by the Hartford Courant and state employee labor
unions, according to an account in the New York Times.
Following his
ascension to the governor’s office, Mr. Weicker brought Mr. Cibes on board as
his Office of Policy Management (OPM) chief. Mr. Cibes then laid before the new
governor the budgetary bad news, which instantly converted Mr. Weicker from an
anti to a pro income tax fundamentalist Elmer Gantry. On the way to instituting an
income tax, Mr. Weicker had to step over an imposing hypocrisy bar, having
insisted, along with all the other candidates running for governor that year
save Mr. Cibes, that instituting an income tax, given the state’s dour economic
condition, would be “like pouring gas in a fire.”
Shortly after the
income tax bill passed into law, more than 40,000 protestors appeared at the
state capitol demanding the tax be axed. The General Assembly obliged by
passing a measure repealing the tax, which was vetoed by Mr. Weicker. The veto override
fell one vote short of passing, and the income tax became a permanent feature
of Connecticut life. To make the tax palatable to dubious legislators, a
constitutional spending cap was attached to the final bill. In a dubious
arrangement with the tribes, Weicker persuaded the Indians to surrender a
portion of their slot earnings in return for a monopoly on gambling in the
state, a protection racket reminiscent of Al Capone’s Chicago minus the machine
guns.
Fast forward to
Governor Dannel Malloy’s first term. Other governors have danced agilely around
Connecticut’s inconvenient Constitutional spending cap. The constitutional
spending cap specifies:
“The general assembly shall not authorize an increase in general
budget expenditures for any fiscal year above the amount of general budget
expenditures authorized for the previous fiscal year by a percentage which
exceeds the greater of the percentage increase in personal income or the
percentage increase in inflation, unless the governor declares an emergency or
the existence of extraordinary circumstances and at least three-fifths of the
members of each house of the general assembly vote to exceed such limit for the
purposes of such emergency or extraordinary circumstances.”
This spending
stop sign has not prevented the state’s governmental apparatus from increasing
spending threefold since it was instituted, although both inflation and
personal income have remained flat during the same period. As a practical
matter, largely because the General Assembly has yet to implement the
constitutional law by providing necessary definitions, the constitutional cap
is a spending compliant pussy cat. The Malloy administration and the Democratic
dominated General Assembly this year breezed through the stop sign traveling at
warp speed when both decided to remove $6 billion cap counted dollars from the
strictures imposed by the state constitution.
The parallels
between the Malloy and Weicker administrations are too obvious to ignore. Both
governors raised taxes to discharge deficits; the Malloy tax increase is the
largest in state history. The niggling little tax increases that the Weicker
tax was supposed to ameliorate returned with a vengeance in Mr. Malloy’s first
budget. Spending cuts in both administrations were doubtful and minimal. Mr.
Weicker steered a course around Republicans and moderate Democrats to enact his
tax increase, the second largest in state history. Mr. Malloy tossed
Republicans from the room when he negotiated his budget, pre-approved by the General
Assembly, with tax hungry unions. Mr. Weicker relied on state unions to get
elected; Mr. Malloy relied on the same bunch to shape his budget. Both the
Weicker and Malloy budgets were union friendly.
The Weicker
recession that followed the imposition of his income tax lasted about 10 years.
The Malloy recession, joined now to a national recession, will be more perdurable, even though the Malloyalists and
progressives in the General Assembly remain giddily optimistic that
Connecticut’s recovery will be swift and long lasting. The $6 billion
the Malloy administration removed from the provisions of Connecticut’s
constitutional cap should allow the Malloyalists to continue their improvident
spending through the next elections. After that – who cares?
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