Governor Ned Lamont, we are told by Christine Stewart of CTNewsJunkie,
is about to bump heads with SEBAC union heads authorized to form contracts with
Connecticut’s executive department. No need to wonder whose head will break
first.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt solved the problem of
the union organization of federal workers in 1937 when, approached by Luther
Stewart, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, to allow
collective bargaining, Roosevelt nixed the idea for the best of reasons.
Roosevelt
wrote to Stewart, “… the process of collective bargaining, as usually
understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct
and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The
very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative
officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with
Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak
by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly,
administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in
many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or
rules in personnel matters.”
Here in Connecticut, the General Assembly has been for decades renting out its solemn constitutional obligation to exert unilateral control over budgetary getting and spending on behalf of “the whole people.” The contracts drawn up between unionized state workers and the governor of Connecticut in backrooms closed to the public are legally binding and enforceable by the courts. Such contracts make the judiciary, not the legislature, the final arbiters of any disputes between union heads, the governor and legislators.
We all know that courts and arbiters are legally obliged to
enforce SEBAC contracts. State worker unions have effectively become
Connecticut’s fourth branch of government. But the Roosevelt solution is yet
available to the General Assembly, which should recover its constitutional
usufruct by unilaterally deciding matters involving unionized state employee salaries
and pensions -- for the best of reasons.
State government is constitutionally bound to represent the
general interests of “the whole people,” not special interests such as unions
or business lobbies. And the legislature, not the courts, should decide all matters
relating to getting and spending. Connecticut’s highest in the nation unmanageable
pension liability – cresting at $127.7 billion in 2017 -- has been caused by
legislative cowardice and a rank abdication of constitutional obligations. Connecticut’s
employee debt, according to a 2016 American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) study, amounts to $35,721 per person,
the second highest per capita debt in the nation behind Alaska.
“Connecticut,” the study notes “ranks last with a dismal
19.7 percent funding ratio, down 3.1 percentage points from last year.
Connecticut is one of four states to set retiree benefits through collective
bargaining and is unique in that the legislature does not have to consent to
contracts for them to go into effect.”
It is a counsel of despair to suppose that state debt can only
be reduced by pushing payments out to the future, the solution presented by the
Lamont administration. Re-amortization does not REDUCE debt – at all; it simply
distributes the debt to future taxpayers.
Virtually all Connecticut’s problems are political in nature.
Real reform in the state would involve changing state worker pensions to
defined contribution plans and abolishing in the future all contractual arrangements
with unions. The state should drop its pension plan for teachers and allow educators to pay into social security and collect benefits. It is absolutely
immoral to permit teacher’s bleak futures to depend upon a bankrupt pension
system. The legislature, acting on behalf of “the whole people,” should set salaries
and pensions unilaterally. The state should further reduce debt for children yet
unborn, upon whose shoulders OUR debt will be placed through re-amortization,
by selling off its assets whenever possible. The state should improve
education, especially in cities, by financing successful educational ventures and
de-financing unsuccessful ones, providing vouchers to students whose schools
the state has mercifully closed, so they may attend any successful school of
their choice.
Is there anyone in this broken and foundering state – anyone
at all – who believes that Lamont would, in his carefully choreographed tĂªte-Ă -tĂªtes
with greedy and obdurate union leaders,
force state unions to adopt any of the sensible and restorative measures cited
above? Is there any reporter, columnist or editorial writer in the state – any
at all -- who believes ameliorative measures such as those cited above will be
adopted in any meeting between Lamont and union leaders whose court enforceable
contracts had been pushed out by the Malloy admiration well beyond his first term
in office?
Rex Harrison once was asked by a reporter why he was leaving
costly London for less costly Brussels after having made his fortune and
reputation in Britain. Was it taxes? No, he answered; it was the chocolates.
When the CEO of UTC is next asked whether he and his band of brothers decision
makers have left Connecticut for Boston because of high taxes, burdensome
regulation and a moronic state government, reporters and commentators in
Connecticut should not be surprised when he replies: Nope; it’s the baked
beans.
Comments