Skip to main content

Union Contracts Will Determine Connecticut’s Fate

Whither Connecticut?

All the statistics point downward.

Connecticut is first in the nation in per capita debt. Our pension liabilities would make a Croesus blush. Very little has been done to address the problem of long term spending. Negotiations with powerful unions are pending.

Compared with hard edged races in New Jersey and New York, both Connecticut gubernatorial candidates in the last election ran soft campaigns. Neither Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey nor Andrew Cuomo of New York were shy in telling people during their campaigns precisely what they hoped to do to address their state’s chronic problems -- cut spending, no tax increases.

For this reason, it may be said that Mr. Christie and Mr. Cuomo have clear mandates. Governor Dannel Malloy, on the other hand, let it be known that he would both raise taxes and cut spending if elected, but his campaign fell far short on particulars, and most attempts to draw specifics out of him were artfully deflected.

Mr. Malloy’s was a classic Connecticut campaign: Don’t make promises that time and chance may veto; don’t bind yourself to specific solutions. Mr. Malloy drew votes heavily from the cities, which secured him the election; but most of the towns went for his Republican opponent, Tom Foley. The question therefore arises: Does Mr. Malloy have a mandate from the people to govern? And the answer is a qualified “Yes.”

Mr. Malloy’s mandate comes from his status as governor, but it does not arise from affirmations made during his amorphous campaign and affirmed by voters. Apart from his pledge to both raise taxes and cut spending, Mr. Malloy could not have received from most towns in the state an affirmation to specific taxing and spending proposals he never made in his campaign.

In the months following the gubernatorial campaign, an anxious state awaited Mr. Malloy’s budget. The destiny of states is written plainly in budgets; here there can be no ambiguity, because a budget is a revenue and allocation plan that shapes the future.

Governors in states contiguous to Connecticut turned in hard budgets. Mr. Malloy’s budget plan is a near fifty, fifty proposition of “shared sacrifice” that calls for massive tax increases, relative to other states, and relies upon presumed spending cuts that will arrive, in this the best of all possible worlds, when Mr. Malloy, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, once a union steward, President of the Senate Don Williams, always a reliable union supporter, conspire in closed meetings to determine whether unions give-backs will be substantial or cosmetic, permanent or temporary. Mr. Malloy’s proposed tax increases are substantial and permanent.

In this regard, Connecticut has a lamentably deficient history replete with governors abjectly conceding to long term union demands while accepting from unions short term savings. The present Democratic triumvirate – Malloy-Donovan-Williams – will be negotiating union contracts for years in the future, and the destiny of Connecticut will be shaped by these contracts.

Why? Because it is union contracts, both on the state and municipal level, that shape Connecticut’s budgets.

A contract is a promissory note. Increasingly, politicians across the state – Mayor John DeStefano of New Haven is the latest progressive mugged by reality – are beginning to embrace the shattering perception that Connecticut cannot satisfy promises ALREADY MADE in union contracts. The state has long since arrived at a point in which its “poor box,” money putatively dedicated to help the needy, is being drawn down by state workers whose benefit and salary packages far outstrip those who are paying taxes.

Despite Mr. Malloy’s valiant pledge to make government transparent, the state budget, clearly the most important single piece of legislation affecting Connecticut’s future, will be pre-shaped in negotiations the governor will conduct with the dominant Democratic Party in the legislature, and none of the contract negotiations conducted with unions by the governor’s office will be presented to the general public until they are completed, after which will taxpayers be served with -- the bill.

Comments

Anonymous said…
A less than 6,000 vote win (stolen in Bridgeport and New Haven) is hardly a strong win but a win none the less. Let’s see what happens Tuesday in the special elections. I think the next time around in November 2013, when everyone has less in their pockets; a change will come-even here in BLUE CT.

Popular posts from this blog

Obamagod!

My guess is that Barack Obama is a bit too modest to consider himself a Christ figure , but artist will be artists. And over at “ To Wit ,” a blog run by professional blogger, journalist, radio commentator and ex-Hartford Courant religious writer Colin McEnroe, chocolateers will be chocolateers. Nice to have all this attention paid to Christ so near to Easter.

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Did Chris Murphy Engage in Private Diplomacy?

Murphy after Zarif blowup -- Getty Images Connecticut U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, up for reelection this year, had “a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during the Munich Security Conference” in February 2020, according to a posting written by Mollie Hemingway , the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist. Was Murphy commissioned by proper authorities to participate in the meeting, or was he freelancing? If the former, there is no problem. If the latter, Murphy was courting political disaster. “Such a meeting,” Hemingway wrote at the time, “would mean Murphy had done the type of secret coordination with foreign leaders to potentially undermine the U.S. government that he accused Trump officials of doing as they prepared for Trump’s administration. In February 2017, Murphy demanded investigations of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn because he had a phone call with his counterpart-to-be in Russia. “’Any effort to undermine our nation’s foreign policy – e