Who is Governing Connecticut?

Governor of Lamont, Andrew Cuomo

Is Connecticut’s governor governing Connecticut? If not Governor Ned Lamont, who is governing the state? We know for certain that the Democrat dominated General Assembly, deferring too often to the governor, is operating in suspended animation.

If the reader -- possibly a waitress, barber or candlestick maker teetering on the edge of unemployment, owing to the governor’s too frequent obiter dicta – answers that Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, or Philip Dunton Murphy, the financier Governor of New Jersey, is governing Connecticut, he may not be far wrong. Governor Ned Lamont has made a compact with both governors to co-ordinate their executive orders.

“I regret to say that we’re going to announce within a day or so that public schools will remain closed for at least another month — until May 20,” the Hartford Business Journal reported on April 9. “I would assume that you can say the same thing about bars and restaurants and some of our other businesses.” Governor Ned Lamont was addressing a compliant gaggle of Connecticut businessmen by means of a teleconferencing call, which is how the rest of us will be communicating with each other – until the end of May and perhaps beyond. Connecticut, New York and New Jersey will emerge from the Coronavirus infestation hand in hand.

But hold your horses there. Press Secretary and Director of Digital Media for Lamont David Bednarz has issued a clarification to Connecticut’s compliant media as follows: “‘In his remarks, the governor was saying that the date for the bar and restaurant closures will likely also be extended to some point yet to be determined,’ Bednarz wrote. However, ‘The governor is not yet taking action regarding bars and restaurants.’”

The clarification was further clarified by Lamont three day later, on April 12, in a Milford Patch report: “Lamont this week made it clear that there is no guarantee that the ordinance will be rescinded on May 20 and he said it's possible it could be extended further. He said the state will not return to normal until health experts say it is safe to do so and added ramping up testing will also be a key part in the return to normalcy.”

“It’s not what you know that hurt’s ya,” the old adage runs, “it’s what ya know for certain that just ain’t so.” Here is a partial listing, reported by National Review, of some things we do NOT know concerning Coronavirus: the number of asymptomatic people who have contracted the virus; the number of infected people who will in the near future be able to fight off the virus as opposed to the number of people who will succumb to it; why some drugs, hydroxychloroquine for example, stem the virus in some cases but not others; when an effective vaccine will be produced for general dispersal; what made the virus jump to humans and ignite the pandemic; when “social-distancing rules, quarantine orders, curfews, and other restrictions” upon our liberties will end.

Curiosity, philosophers say, is the beginning of wisdom: modesty marks its borders.

Here in Connecticut many of us are anxiously wondering when we may safely reopen our shuttered businesses, closed by people who perhaps know things for certain that ain’t so. We do not know what damage to Connecticut’s already weakened economy may be caused by a prolonged shutdown, or whether the damage will be irreversible. We may be fairly certain that it cannot make sense to impose upon every municipality in the state the same prophylactic remedies or the same business killing restrictions. When we lay plans for a future arrival of another pandemic, or an unwelcome return of this one, perhaps in the Fall, we will want to review the measures now being applied across the board in Connecticut. And given that Connecticut is not New York or New Jersey, we should in the future tailor our remedies to Connecticut, not to New Jersey or New York.

One incompetent, arrogant and immodest governor is more than enough to ruin a state, and three such governors compound the ruination by a factor of three.

We are told by Hearst Media that Cuomo is in touch with President Donald Trump daily, while Lamont has “only once spoken with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence one-on-one since the epidemic began.” Republican leader in the State Senate Len Fasano feels the Governor has lost touch with the General Assembly, though telecommunications with the legislature remains a live option.  We now learn from a piece in the Washington Times that Lamont has joined a consortium of 10 Northeast governors that will decide when they are to open the shuttered economy. Lamont appears to be the silent partner of the group; Cuomo, naturally is the most boisterous. At the same time, Lamont has failed to maintain an ongoing working relationship with his own state government officials, not to mention the chief executive officers of Connecticut’s municipalities from whom he might receive valuable data  bearing upon the reopening of Connecticut’s gasping economy.

So disconnected is Lamont that he seems barely aware of the grassroots rumblings.

It might be well for everyone in the state if Lamont, taking advantage of the Cuomo model, were to make it possible for every Connecticut municipality to decide when businesses in their areas should open. He then might consider establishing connections with his own state representatives in the General Assembly, while refusing calls from the Governors of New York and New Jersey, both of whom are fully able to represent their own constituencies whose interests may run athwart the interests of Connecticut. Apart from a governor, Connecticut needs a restoration model different than that of New York, which has little in common with Cuomo’s paradise apart from an insupportable per capita tax load, and Connecticut’s proximity to New York City, one of the poorest managed Coronavirus hot spots in the nation.  The city used to send Fairfield County millionaires fleeing from excessive taxation; now it is in the business of exporting New Yorkers stricken with Coronavirus.