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Connecticut Unions To Lamont, Barnes, Kafsouleas – Nyet!


Governor Ned Lamont, sinking to his knees, recently asked state union officials if they might please – PLEASE! – accept some reductions in the cost of labor.

Connecticut, Lamont reminded SEBAC, a conglomeration of union chieftains authorized to strike contracts with the chief executive of the state, was in dire straits following months of a crippling business slowdown caused by the shuttering of businesses across the state ordered by Lamont in response to an international Coronavirus infestation.

On June 20, some Connecticut-stay-at-homes quietly celebrated their three month liberation from government enforced sequestration by having breakfast – inside their local eateries. Lamont, through his extraordinary executive authority, had permitted the opening of restaurant interiors, provided owners observed his strictures: restaurants could only be half filled, awaiting further orders, and everyone had to wear masks, except when moving their chops over bacon and eggs The usual seating was expanded to accommodate state ordered distancing. And customers would be required to sit while breakfasting on a pad of nails – only kidding there.    

Lamont might have prayed for some concession from unions, but if he did so, he hadn’t fallen to his knees in any Connecticut Christian church, all of them, deemed by the governor inessential businesses. Neo-pagans and practical atheists, a majority, some say, of politicians and journalists in the state, have generally considered the consolations of the Christian faith to be inessential.

No deal, said state unions to Lamont. To be more precise, the unions had already struck a deal with Lamont’s Democrat predecessor, the bristly Dannel Malloy who, following his exit as governor, had gotten a job in Maine overseeing that state’s higher education ganglion. It is not at all unusual for discarded politicians in Connecticut to find a soft berth, once leaving office, on some cushy educational featherbed.

When the head of former Governor Lowell Weicker’s Office of Policy Management, Bill Cibes – the godfather of Connecticut’s income tax – left office, he fell on a featherbed prepared for him by Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax.  Cibes became chancellor of Connecticut’s state university system and rode out of office with plaudits from the state’s various editorial departments ringing in his ears. Weicker himself was awarded the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award for having saddled his state with an income tax. Such divine courage!

Lamont, a Weicker protégé, looking for a stick with which he might compel compliance from state employee unions – a threat of layoffs, forced reductions in pay and benefits – found himself, largely because of Malloy’s loving exertions on behalf of state unions, without stick or carrot in hand.

All the carrots and sticks had been baked into state employee contracts by Malloy —afterwards deeded to Lamont. With minor, unimportant exceptions, Lamont CANNOT lay off seasoned state employees, and he must honor the terms of the Malloy SEBAC contracts that award state employees salary, step and COLA increases. The Malloy-SEBAC deal is sealed in contract concrete that cannot be adjusted by the General Assembly, which has been forced into sleep-mode by Lamont’s extraordinary emergency powers. Lamont’s near totalitarian powers will not elapse until September.

Mercifully, one has not heard from Lamont the classic complaint belched by Connecticut governors --that they had "inherited" from preceding governors the ills they are now courageously facing. The governor who preceded Lamont was not a Republican but a Democrat of Lamont’s own tribe. It is considered unfriendly and ill-mannered in politics to foul one’s own nest.

Both Lamont and his predecessor, Malloy, who gleefully marched on strike lines with union members, have an unresolved problem with state unions, and it may be useful here to attempt a description of the problem.

Democrat and Republican governors use unions – always delighted to be so used – to achieve reelection to office.

Qui bono? What is the benefit returned by politicians to unions? The answer to the question is dancing right under the noses of those whose business it is to issue accurate news reports to the general public.

We all know by now that the state employee pension fund “lockbox” was, to put it gently, a term of art among politicians ever since the fund had been established. Far from being a lockbox inaccessible to greedy, campaign conscious politicians, the state pension lockbox has been, over the years, a slush fund used by spendthrift politicians to offset the inevitable consequences of tax overloads. The state employee pension fund is to tax addicted politicians what medically assisted detoxification is to heroin addiction, a temporary relief that could, if the addiction is not squarely confronted, send the patient back to mean streets for deeper immersion in an overmastering habit.

We’ve known for a good long time what the problems are – and how to fix them. Here in Connecticut, neither flesh nor spirit has been willing to confront the union-state government complex.

Connecticut, we are told by the always watchful and reliable Yankee Institute has the “worst-funded pension system in the country, maintaining its position from last year at the bottom of the list even as state pension payments continue to increase.” The result of the unholy alliance might make a laugh inducing comedy.

UConn’s expected deficit: 50M,” a recent Courant headline blared. UConn President  Thomas Kafsouleas begged – on his knees? – unions to assist him in reducing costs related to the Coronavirus infestation “a week after Gov. Ned Lamont said he wanted state employees to forgo scheduled 3.5% raises” baked into their irrevocable contracts. The unions said no both the UConn president and chief financial officer for the Connecticut State Colleges and University system Ben Barns, who was – TA-DA! – Malloy’s Office of Policy Management Director – the guy responsible, along with Malloy, for baking salary and benefit preferments into the very same state contracts that now prevent Lamont and Kafsouleas from achieving cost-saving cuts.

But all the politically interested parties, including Malloy, are luxuriating on their post-political feather-beds – so, good on them, right?


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