Pensioning Off Pension Debt To Towns

The Democrat plan to “to have cities and towns share in the cost of public school teachers’ pensions,” as the Hartford Courant put it in a recent story, continues to be “controversial,” perhaps the understatement of the year. The plan would “cost municipalities a combined $73 million a year and would lead to property tax increases across the state.”

The principal spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, Kevin Maloney, has characterized the plan to shift to towns some cost of pensions without giving the towns the opportunity to cut spending by reducing teacher salaries and benefits  as “the largest unfunded state mandate in recent memory,” and the executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns Betsy Gara has said, “Shifting $73 million in pension costs onto the backs of already overburdened homeowners and other property taxpayers will diminish housing values, undermining our state and local economies."

Local government relies on property taxes to run municipal governments, and here too the state plans to partly deprive these rival municipal governments of their means of financing through a series of measures: eliminating property tax on cars, raising the tax on home ownership by boosting from 70% to 100%  the assessed value of houses, and more.

The characterizations of Maloney and Gara, though true, are not likely to move the legislative needle, now stuck on "Democrat."

Municipal cries of pity from under the hobnailed boot of state government will not matter for reasons Governor Ned Lamont and the two most important decision makers in the General Assembly, Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz and President Pro Tem of the Senate Martin Looney, are not inclined to discuss. Public discussions that do not lead to actionable, ameliorative, bipartisan solutions in a representative government are exercises in fatuity. There is no point in having a debate or discussion with an arsonist who cannot be prevented from burning down the house. The debate might be entertaining and even instructive, but it will always end in ashes. The assault on municipal governments by the prevailing powers in state government has been going on for some time.

Progressivism has simply widened the gap between an accommodating center-right in Connecticut’s General Assembly and an aggressive left, which in Connecticut commands all the decision making political offices in the state: the governor’s office, the General Assembly, the entire membership of the state’s US Congressional Delegation and all the state’s constitutional offices.

Puffing out his progressive chest, the state’s new Attorney General, William Tong, wants to broaden the prehensile grasp of a metastasizing office to allow him to pursue civil rights violators, and he has a strong wind of  287 employees at his back. King Tong also is engaged in suing a US President, although there is no warrant for doing so either in Connecticut’s Constitution or the statutes that may give life to his newest Frankenstein. In Connecticut just now, only the reach of government is permitted to grow without impediment; everything else is highly regulated or ruthlessly taxed by an omni-incompetent state government. Connecticut is still in a recessionary mode, although the national recession ended in the later part of 2019, ten years ago. The prolonged recession has been attributed by some rational economists and political commentators to a disinclination on the part of state government to rein in out-of-control state spending, which has increased threefold since the Lowell Weicker income tax was launched in 1991.

The progressive movement, both nationally and in Connecticut, is interested in ruling rather than governing in a republican, small “r”, fashion.  Town governments in Connecticut stand as republican sentinels preventing rule by an autocratic state. Governor Lamont will continue to call Republican leaders in for private discussions, but none of their input will result in nonpartisan solutions. Lamont and the progressive leaders of the General Assembly are willing to lend an ear to Republicans, but the ears of progressive Democrats are not attached to their governing hands.

After Democrats had swept the boards in the recent elections, people in Connecticut were waiting patiently to see – who rules? They now have their answer.

Connecticut House Republicans, who prefer spending reductions to tax increases, have now released “a complete list of new taxes, including those put forth by the governor’s office and those approved by the action of Hartford’s majority party in the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.

Here is the list:

• A new 2% Tax on Capital Gains
• Property Tax Credit – Removed Scheduled Expansion
• Tax for Rideshare
• Increase in Sales Tax on Meals
• 10% Tax Increase on Alcohol
• Increase Tax rate on Movies 6% to 6.35%
• Eliminate 5 year, $500 credit for STEM college graduates
• Tax interior design services
• Tax dry-cleaning and laundry services, incl. coin-operated
• Tax parking
• Tax on digital downloads from 1.0% to standard 6.35% rate
• Tax Safety apparel
• Maintain current 10% business surcharge set to expire in tax year 2019
• Tax E-Cigarettes liquid at 75% wholesale
• Increase Minimum Markup on Cigarettes
• Increased Sales due to Ecig Excise
• Maintain Hospital User Fee at FY 2019 level of $900 million
• Implement recommendation of ambulatory surgical center tax study
• Surcharge on Plastic Bags of 10 cents
• Increase annual filing fee for LLC’s and LLP’s from $20 to $100
• Eliminate increased exemption for social security income
• Eliminate exemption for pension and annuity income
• Eliminate the sales tax free week
• Tax legal services
• Tax on accounting services
• Tax on architectural services
• Tax on engineering services
• Tax on real estate activities and agents/brokers
• Tax on veterinary services
• Tax on barber shops and beauty salons
• Tax on massage therapists and electrology services
• Tax on sports/recreation instruction and industries
• Tax on horse boarding and training
• Tax on travel arrangement and scenic transportation
• Tax on services to buildings and dwellings
• Tax on waste collection
• Tax on Renovation and repair of residential property
• Tax on Repair or maintenance of vessels
• Tax on Winter boat storage
• Tax on Increase tax on boats from 2.99% to standard 6.35% rate
• Tax Increase hotel occupancy tax from 15% to 17%
• Tax on Trade-ins for vehicles
• Tax on Non-prescription drugs
• Tax on Text books, college & professional schools
• Tax on Newspapers and magazines
• Tax on Connecticut credit unions
• Tax on Campground rentals
• Tax on Bicycle helmets
• Tax on child car seats
• Tax on vegetable seeds
• A new 25 cent deposit on wine and liquor glass bottles
• A new Add 5 cent bottle deposit to nips
• A new tax on payroll to fund state-run Family Medical Leave

These are straws added to an already tax-burdened camel’s back. And we know the answer to the question “who rules?”

Lamont, who continues to morph into his political padrone Weicker – the toll tax is to Lamont what the income tax was to Weicker -- is by no means an independent political actor. He is being led through a now visible ring in his nose into a leftist utopia heralded by big city politicians such as Looney and union employed stooge Joe Aresimowicz. And Connecticut’s news media? Well now, the so-called “tribunes of the people” have been dozing at their computer screens for decades, which is why Connecticut, now the land of progressive habits, is caught in the quicksand of uncontrolled spending.