This means that every dollar collected and disbursed by
state government should be the province of elected General Assembly members. In
most states, the salaries and benefits of unionized state employees are
determined by legislatures – and NOT through contractual obligations presented
to the legislature by governors colluding with union chiefs to benefit an
undemocratic hegemony that such contracts tend to support and enforce. In
addition to depleting the constitutional authority of the General Assembly, such
contracts as have been arranged between Connecticut’s governors and unions throw
dispute resolutions into the state’s third branch of government, the court
system, and decisions made by courts are, by definition, NOT representative
choices made by the legislative branch. No governor of recent memory has had
the courage to say to a union-friendly General Assembly – the state
constitution assigned you, the members of the House and Senate, the obligation
of shaping Connecticut’s economic future, and this is a constitutional
obligation you should not be renting out to unrepresentative political factions.
According to a September 2018
Truth In Accounting (TIA) report -- which incorporates both assets and
liabilities, not just pension debt – Connecticut, regarded as a sinkhole state,
“only has $12.1 billion of assets available to pay bills totaling $81.9 billion…
Because Connecticut doesn't have enough money to pay its bills, it has a $69.8
billion financial hole. To fill it, each Connecticut taxpayer would have to
send $53,400 to the state.” In addition, “The state is still hiding $10.4
billion of its retiree health care debt. A new accounting standard will be
implemented in the 2018 fiscal year which will require states to report this
debt on the balance sheet.”
The promissory pension notes state officials have written to
state employees should linger in the mind of nearly everyone in the state who
is or is not averse to state employee unions as a loathsome fiduciary betrayal.
Our pension debt has been on the ascent for decades – and contractual promises
must be kept, so the courts tell us. Moreover, the courts will enforce
contractual promises made by politicians who, many people may be surprised to
learn, had not made deposits into the reserve set aside for paying down pension
debt for the first thirty of its existence.
Apparently, elected state officials were treating state debt the way elected federal officials have been accustomed to treating the
national debt – now cresting at about 22 trillion dollars. The national debt,
British macro-economist John Maynard Keynes had whispered into the ears of
politicians, is a debt we owe to ourselves; so no need to fidget about paying
it off. And of course the intimidating national debt may be financed through
the printing of devalued currency, an option not available to irresponsible
state legislators who may discharge debts in one of only three ways: through
bonding, revenue increases or spending cuts.
Having established a Connecticut pension fund that remained
empty for three decades, state politicians, in succeeding years, have transferred
to the General Fund payments that should have been secured in the state’s
pension “lockbox.” And the same politicians have raided other so called
lockboxes along the way, dumping their loot into the General Fund and
disbursing the pilfered funds to advance the political interests of state politicians
allied with the unions that benefit from their ministrations.
One Connecticut commentator heralded the advent of a new Lamont
administration this way: “Lamont
and Malloy, similar on policy, much different in personality.” But if policy does not change, the state
will be in for more of the same – because Malloy, who tagged himself as a
porcupine, was blind as a deer to the predictable consequences of his ruinous
policies. The 300 page apologia Malloy distributed to the media before he left
office touting the high points of his administration -- the abolition of the death penalty, the
institution of a poorly conceived “Get Out Of Jail Early” reform plan
that involved the unearned release of some
violent criminals, a ban on so called “assault weapons” after the Sandy Hook
mass murder of young children, a hand of affection held out to gay people, including
two of his close political associates, Michael Lawlor, now the state’s prison
czar, and Superior Court Judge Andrew McDonald -- were social campaign blindfolds that served to prevent opinion makers from dwelling on his economic failures.
Malloy insists that McDonald
was spurned by homophobic Republican General Assembly members for a position on
Connecticut’s Supreme Court, a claim that seems highly improbable, since the
presumed homophobes in the legislature did nothing to impede McDonald’s precipitous
rise in state politics. This is a prime
example, though not the only one, of the gubernatorial porcupine throwing his quills at his political opponents.
Lamont, we are to suppose, will be a kinder and gentler Malloy. In matters of
policy – the only matter that matters – the New Year will usher in a governor whom many regard as being more of the same, more Malloy minus the quills.
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