Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The larger principle underlying the Supreme Court’s decision in  Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31  is this:  To compel people to give money to a cause of which they disapprove is the very definition of tyranny. The court decision ending the automatic deduction of union dues from employee paychecks naturally did not go down well with unions. Recently, the town of Vernon bumped heads with union honchos. Administrator for the Town of Vernon Michael Purcaro has said that ending automatic union dues deductions protects the town, taxpayers and employees from any legal issues in the wake of the  Janus  decision. The town, attempting to bring itself into compliance with the  Janus  decision, ran afoul of AFSCME Council 4, according to a piece by Marc Fitch in  The Yankee Institute , a non-partisan Connecticut think tank.

During his coming first term in office, Governor Ned Lamont need have no fear of the Republican Party, which was thoroughly thrashed by Democrats in the recently concluded elections. Out- hustled by Democrats, Republicans lost 12 seats in the state House and 5 seats in the state Senate, returning the political  status quo ante  to the Democrat Party’s high point when former Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office. In years following the Malloy administration, Republicans had achieved parity with Democrats in the Senate and were only a few seats behind Democrats in the House.

Is Ned Lamont, the Democrat multi-millionaire businessman who prevailed in Connecticut’s governor’s race over Republican multi-millionaire businessman Bob Stefanowski, being pushed to the back of the bus by party regulars? The governor-In-waiting is being cuffed a bit by progressive U.S Senator Chris Murphy, among other ambitious Democrats, according to a news item in a Hartford paper.   The traditional party boss structure ended decades ago, but necessary functions once executed by strong party bosses such as John Bailey of blessed memory must, never-the-less, be performed by someone. And why should the power to shape the future of the State Democrat Party not fall to Murphy rather than Lamont?

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical – Thomas Jefferson California, of all places, is making a stab – too little, too late -- at reigning in its Gargantuan pension liabilities. Pension reformers in California recognize frankly that certain kinds of state workers should not be invested with benefits and pensions in excess of those available to all other workers in the private market place. California’s unaffordable pension and salary burden can be ameliorated, reformers say, by dividing government employee benefits into three types: 1) benefits already earned for completed work, 2) those under pending contracts that relate to future work, and 3) those performing work not yet performed and not covered by contracts written in stone. Under a reform regime, different levels of protection will be afforded to the different groups. Level 1 workers will be afforded full protection; pension an...

No one has yet asked Ned Lamont – according to recent polls, Connecticut’s next governor – how he plans to bring the state’s public employee unions to heel. Connecticut’s unionized, tax supported UConn Health Center is now, for all practical purposes, bankrupt. “As a public institution with a large share of unionized physicians and staff,” The Hartford Courant notes in a recent story, the UConn Health Center faces “added challenges. Pension liabilities for its more than 2,300 employees increased from $1.2 billion in 2016 to an anticipated $2.3 billion this year.”

To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical – Thomas Jefferson The sentiment above is to be found in an Act for Establishing Religious Freedom , a bill drawn up by Thomas Jefferson as part of the Revised Code of Virginia laws, but the sentiment might easily apply to Janus vs. AFSCME , a decision rendered recently by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Speaker of the State House of Representatives Joe Aresimowicz has planted his flag. He has announced he will call a vote on instituting a new tax, congestion tolling, in Connecticut. “I’m not willing to walk away from this session with doing nothing to solve this problem. Our job is to rep (sic) the citizens of the state and make very difficult decisions for the betterment of this state. This falls into that category for me.” There is no need to pause here and discuss the touchy question whether Aresimowicz properly understands what Connecticut's real problems are. After two major tax increases, the largest and the second largest in state history, inexorably followed by high and unsupportable deficits, the question – is Connecticut suffering from a revenue or a spending problem? – has now been settled. Even major newspapers that had in the past asserted Connecticut’s budget problems had been caused by insufficient revenue have since repented and now acknowledge the state ha...

Here is the lede graph of a story,  Ethics opinion: Aresimowicz can be House Speaker, union staffer ,  found in CTMirror: “The Office of State Ethics has advised Rep. Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, that nothing in the state ethics code bars him from continuing his job as education coordinator with AFSCME, an influential public-employee union, once he becomes Speaker of the House of Representatives.” The Office of State Ethics (OSE) decision was in reply to a query put to it by the Office of the House Majority Leader : “… let us know whether there are any apparent ethical issues arising from his [Aresimowicz’s] employment, including a conflict of interest with his legislative duties? If there are any further actions that Rep. Aresimowicz should take to protect himself from ethical concerns, we would appreciate that advice.”

Mark Pazniokas of CTMirror  points out that executive director of AFSCME Council 4 Sal Luciano is not just “another union bigwig.” He is House Majority Leader Joe Aresimowicz’s boss: “Aresimowicz is the education coordinator for AFSCME, a union that paid him $97,000 in 2015, more than double his $43,000 compensation as one of the highest-ranking members of the part-time Connecticut General Assembly.” Mr. Aresimowicz is on a fast track towards becoming the next Speaker of the House in the Democrat dominated General Assembly. If successful in his venture, he will be replacing Brendan Sharkey, a small business owner who recently announced he is calling it quits. Mr. Sharkey has been put through the wringer during the last few budget sessions, which have been, to use a polite word, fractious.

Governor Dannel Malloy banged the knuckles of some state unions when SEBAC, a coalition of union leaders, failed to pass what he called “Plan A,” a budget that some legislators friendly to unions thought was inordinately friendly to unions. Sen. Edith Prague , long a supporter of union interests, said at the time she thought union members who had voted down Plan A were mad to have spurned a plan so favorable to their interests. The governor had concocted at the same time a default Plan B that simply was not a serious contractual proposal ; Plan B was designed to bludgeon recalcitrant union members into voting for Plan A. Union leaders, at the behest of the governor, then unilaterally redrafted union rules so as to facilitate a favorable vote on a slightly readjusted Plan A. The intimidation, along with the compliance of union leaders, worked, and Plan A2 finally was adopted by unions months after the General Assembly, dominated by Democrats, had voted to pass Plan A. There was some...

During his visit to New London, part of a multi-town tour to sell his budget to taxpayers, Governor Dannel Malloy got an earful from stressed citizens. An engineering manager who works in Montville, John Fearns, unburdened himself on state employee pensions. Mr. Fearns’ business had absorbed some hard knocks during the current lingering recession when “layoff and furlough days were expressed in months, not days." Riffing on the “fair share” that has become a staple of Mr. Malloy’s appearances at town meetings, Mr. Fearns, looking the governor in the eye, asked, “So I'm asking you to look me in the eye, when you ask to raise high taxes for a business model that is unsustainable, one that offers a job for life, paid pension, a Cadillac health plan for as long as you live, and I'm asking you to tell me how you can say that's fair for me.” According to a story in the Day of New London , “Malloy fired right back: ‘The guy who entered into a 20-year deal on benefits wa...