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.
Democrats already
have shown they plan to whack Republicans with President Donald Trump, an
effort that may fall flat if the nation’s economy continues to improve. Whatever
his failings, Trump, most thoughtful voters in the state will realize, was not
the author of the largest and second largest tax increases in Connecticut
history. Malloy’s progressive policies were championed by Democrats in the
General Assembly, most of whom have no plans to retire and resettle in some
less tax-punishing state, as did Florida-bound former Republican Governor Jodi
Rell.
This year, tied to a
Malloy-SEBAC deal that extends state employee union-favorable terms out to
2027, General Assembly Democrats will find themselves defending the
indefensible. Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, a union employee, favors an
increase in Connecticut’s sales tax, even as Malloy has plainly said, several
times, that he will not consider further tax increases as a means for balancing
a future budget deficit of $3.5 billion. Malloy, however, has not vowed to veto the
Democrats’ tax increase plan – and lame-duckers are far less persuasive than a governor plotting re-election to office. In the absence of a veto threat, tax
hungry progressives in the General Assembly doubtless will take Malloy’s often
iterated opposition to new taxes with, as Mark Twain says, a ton of salt.
The most progressive
governor in Connecticut history, Malloy has just rejiggered state education
support to municipalities, introducing a progressive transfer of state funding
at the distribution end. So called rich towns in Connecticut will find their
state education funding cut, and state funding in so called poor towns will
increase proportionally. As a result, state money will flow from municipalities
in which public schools are successful to municipalities -- mostly cities and
towns that are not Republican strongholds – in which public schools are
pedagogically bankrupt. By way of example, Hartford, Connecticut’s Capital City
now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, will receive education funds that
previously had been awarded to, say, New Canaan. This progressive measure, far
outlasting Malloy’s terms in office, will serve as a dog whistle to other
progressive Democrats in the General Assembly.
Recent headlines on
Capitol Report capture well Democrats' efforts to turn the state into a
progressive utopia:
Republican leader in
the Senate Len Fasano was not reaching for hyperbole when he referred to
Malloy’s “dictatorship.” Because progressive Democrats in the General Assembly declined
to produce a timely budget – they still have not submitted their budget –
Malloy automatically assumed plenary powers, and it was as a temporary dictator
that he was able to impose draconian educational state funding cuts on so
called rich municipalities, sending local leaders into shock over his school
cuts.
Republican State
Senator Toni Boucher directly hit the political bulls eye when she asked in a
Facebook posting, “Is the Governor trying to force the legislature into
approving even more and higher taxes on the CT public by using our schools and
local property taxpayers as hostages to pay for his overly generous
contracts with state labor unions that left a $3 billion dollar deficit?”
The answer to
Boucher’s question is – yes. The flower was in the seed from the very
beginning.
Malloy’s popularity
rating has been in the tank for much of his administration, the result, his
critics suppose, of a bristly nature and ruinous policies that have caused
others, both businesses and young potential taxpayers-for-life, to flee the
premises with their pants on fire. “Connecticut’s Democratic Gov. Dannel
P. Malloy,” Christine Stewart of CTNewsJunkie noted, “still remains the most
unpopular Democratic governor in the country, according to a poll by the
Morning Consult , but he improved his image slightly jumping to a 29 percent
approval rating . Malloy often has said he does not live and
die by polls. Really? Would Malloy be leaving his post if his approval rating
were, say, 70 percent, Republican Governor Jodi Rell’s average approval rating while in office?
A correlative
question, much on the minds of political prognosticators just now, is this: will
Democrats in the General Assembly who have aided Malloy be removed from the
premises by a politically engaged electorate in 2018?
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