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| Lamont, State of the State address, 2020, BC (before Coronavirus) |
The state of the state in the New Year will be much the same as the state of the state in the old year. One does not imagine that Fitch Ratings will play a prominent role in Governor Ned Lamont’s upcoming State of the State message, which will be delivered virtually to a General Assembly that has not assembled at the state Capitol for approximately 10 months.
In the age of Coronavirus autocracy, legislatures and the
judicial department are not considered “essential” to constitutional
governance.
The indispensable Yankee Institute, a non-partisan economic
watchdog, noted in a November 2020 piece, “Fitch
Ratings: Connecticut has second-worst debt ratio in the country”, that Fitch’s “2020 State Liability Report
looked at direct debt and net pension liabilities as a percentage of personal
income and found Connecticut’s debt accounted for roughly 26 percent of
personal income compared to the national median of 5 percent.
Ranked 49th in the country for its debt to personal income
ratio -- worse off than New Jersey, Hawaii and Arkansas -- little has changed
for Connecticut, Yankee notes, over the last few years: “’The ten states with
the highest burdens in fiscal 2019 have occupied the top 10 slots in each of
the last four years,’ the report says. ‘Illinois maintained its 50th-ranked
position and Connecticut its 49th-ranked position through this period.’”
Connecticut has been dragging around its debt ball and chain
for so many years that neither Lamont nor progressive members of the state’s
General Non-Assembly any longer hear the clanging of the state’s chains
throughout the halls of government. But to others the clanging rings as loud as
a liberty bell. Connecticut is one of the very few states in the nation that
has lost population – before the arrival of Coronavirus from a Wuhan China lab.
Last February – before Coronavirus palsied our state’s
legislature – Connecticut was listed by Zippia, a career resource
site, 7th among states that had lost population: “Connecticut has an
aging population and a low birth rate, according to Zippia. In addition to this
population reducing formula, 15,519 people left the state between 2017 and
2018. As a result, the population of Connecticut has fallen by 0.43 percent.
Many former Connecticut residents can now be found in Florida, New York,
Massachusetts, South Carolina or California.”
These figures will not likely be cited in Lamont’s State of
the State message to absent legislators at the Capitol Building in Hartford.
Instead, Lamont will ask for – and perhaps receive from a
massively overwhelming contingent of progressive Democrats in the General
Assembly, an extension of his extraordinary emergency powers.
Looking forward to the New Year, the Hartford Courant reports: “In
September, a special bipartisan committee extended Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive
powers until Feb. 9, allowing him to close bars, restaurants and gyms and limit
attendance at nursing homes, weddings and religious gatherings to limit the
spread of COVID-19. Republicans who weren’t happy with the extension will
likely try to revoke those powers as soon as they can — a move Lamont said he
sees coming. ‘We’ve got 80-plus executive orders,’ Lamont said at a news
conference last Monday. ‘I think the legislature is going to want to take a
look at some of those, decide where we are in terms of the infection rate
sometime in January, figure out whether they want to give me a little more
executive authority and help us power through COVID a little bit longer. I
think that will be probably priority No. 1.’”
This passage could use a translator. Lamont’s executive
orders were extended by a handful of Democrat leaders in the General Assembly
that allow the governor to make laws – i.e. executive regulations, 80-plus of
them – that should be the exclusive province of the legislature. When Lamont
says the legislature is “going to want to take a look at those… and decide…
whether they want to give me a little more executive authority,” pretty much a
forgone conclusion, he means that a handful of Democrat leaders in the General
Assembly will, in the near future, deprive all other legislators in the General
Assembly of their constitutional obligation to write laws restraining the heavy
hand of the chief executive.
If anyone doubts executive orders will be extended beyond January,
he or she should consult the Courant’s screaming post-New Year headline in the
paper’s Sunday, January 3rd edition, “IN MEMORANDUM, 6,099,” in
which the paper lists by name lives lost in Connecticut, more than half in
nursing homes, with not of Coronavirus -- AFTER (MY
EMPHASIS) THE ABOVE 80-PLUS EXECUTIVE ORDERS HAD BEEN IMPOSED ON THE STATE BY
LAMONT.
To put it plainly, the rate of infection and deaths in
Connecticut 10 months after Lamont’s 80-plus regulations had been authorized by
a rump legislature are pretty much the same as they were a couple of months
after Coronavirus arrived on American shores from China, some say, more than a
year ago. And, as a result of erratic business closures never approved by the
full General Assembly, Connecticut’s economy is in the tank.
No newspaper in Connecticut has yet printed a full roster of
student names, many of them from urban communities, who have lost precious
educational months owing to the closure of schools in Connecticut at the behest
of teacher unions, Connecticut's unelected fourth branch of government.
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