Lamont -- CTPost
In a recent picture and story, Governor Ned Lamont is shown, pen
in hand, signing a new law “legalizing the recreational use of marijuana on
June 22, 2001, at the state Capitol in Hartford.”
A slew of new laws are due to take effect in the New Year.
They include a new truck tax and a pay raise for indigent lawmakers. The new
tax on large tractor trailer trucks, proponents say, will fix crumbling
highways. Critics, mostly Republican lawmakers, rightly insist the truck tax
“will be passed down to consumers.”
A new bill will erase criminal records “for those convicted
of possession of small amounts of marijuana,” as well as those convicted for
some felonies that are “slated to be erased in the coming months as part of the
‘clean slate’’ law that was passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature.”
Concerning salary increases for public employees, legislators
have adopted judicial salaries as a baseline.
“The base pay for rank-and-file legislators will be $40,000
per year, up from $28,000 for a job that is considered part-time but requires
work year-round,” according to the news story.
“The governor’s salary will jump to more than $225,000 to
reach the level of the chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court …
Constitutional officers like the state attorney general, treasurer,
comptroller, and secretary of the state will earn nearly $190,000 — to match
the level of Superior Court judges.” And, perhaps to spare those enriched by
the salary increases the trouble of applying to the General Assembly and the electorate
for future tax costs, the paper notes that a key provision in the bill “is that
the salaries will now increase automatically [emphasis mine]
through a federal formula under the Employment Cost Index — in the same way
that Social Security benefits increase without a vote each year by the U.S.
Congress.”
The “automatic increase” in salaries and benefits will spare
public officials the necessity of regular submittals to the General Assembly
for salary and benefit increases, as well as predictable intermittent backlash
from hard pressed taxpayers, whose salary increases, if any, will not keep pace
with rampant inflation, essentially a political tax.
Another post-election story advises,
“Gov. New [sic] Lamont will not take a salary for the job for the next four
years, continuing what he did during his first term, according to Anthony
Anthony, the governor’s director of communications.
The Governor’s new communication director is quoted in the
story to this effect: “Just as he did during his first four-year term, Governor
Ned Lamont has chosen to continue declining a salary from the state when he
begins his second term early next year. The governor is grateful for the trust
the people of Connecticut have given to him and he looks forward to the start
of a new term.”
And who could help but notice this line: “As he has done in
other years, the governor shielded his wife’s income by filing a
married-filing-separately return, an option used by about 5% of American
taxpayers. His wife, Annie Lamont, is a successful venture capitalist.”
A cynic – there are too few of them in Connecticut – might
point out that millionaire governors can well afford to decline piddling salaries.
“Lamont’s adjusted gross income was $54 million in 2021,” the
story points out, “a nearly seven-fold increase over the previous year, driven
by $52.7 million in capital gains, according to tax records released in
October.”
Beyond a certain point, practical politics draws a winding
sheet around the assets of millionaire politicians. The greater part of
Lamont’s yearly income is derived from Annie Lamont’s strenuous but hidden efforts
as a “successful venture capitalist.”
One wonders whether a prohibition of self-financed campaigns
might be a popular issue for Republicans, the silent minority, not by choice, in
Connecticut politics. Public financing, after all, is an attempt to “level the
political playing field”; that is, to make the financing of campaigns “equitable,”
lately a magic incantatory word
in Progressive politics. And this effort is frustrated by gerrymandering, out-of-the-campaign-box
PAC contributions, and the self-financing of campaigns by deep-pocketed
millionaires like the Lamonts. One would suppose that Connecticut’s postmodern
progressive Democrats – who would, if they could, eat all millionaires, or
drive them out of state, as St. Patrick once drove the snakes from Ireland –
would favor such an egalitarian proposal.
The New Year, everyone knows, will be much like the old year
– more spending, more taxes, more bills, both legislative and household, and nearly
no contrarian journalism to speak of in the state. With an adulatory media
genuflecting at the feet of the Democrat hegemony in Connecticut, does the
governor really need the services of Anthony Anthony?
Same old, same old, only more of it.
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