Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Months ago, budget guru Ben Barnes, asked why he was taxing hospitals, replied “ because that’s where the money is .” It has been left to others to plumb new tax resources. A tax on hospitals would invariably be passed along to the halt, the lame, the blind and the bleeding, and taxing these poor souls might well damage permanently the hard won reputation of the Democratic Party as the champion of the halt, the lame, the blind and the bleeding. But Yale?

Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting valiantly to upgrade Connecticut’s ancient union encrusted educational establishment. Naturally, he ran into problems with those in the state who defend the status quo, Connecticut’s powerful teacher’s union among them. In a politics of narrow interests, settled opinion is king, because those who have secured their interests, sometimes at the expense of the general good, are understandably reluctant to surrender the golden favors showered upon them by a bought government. God help the man who unsettles settled opinion. Mr. Malloy has proposed to attach teacher tenure to measurable performance, according to Zach Janowski . As in most businesses, including the sports arena, those who do not measure up will be let go. Among those ardently defending the status quo is once radical Big Thinker Jonathan Pelto, whose associations with teacher unions are warm and cordial. These days, whenever Mr. Pelto attempts to throw his two cents into the conversatio...

Zach Janowski, the Yankee Institute investigative reporter singled out by incompetent SEBAC leaders in their baseless complaint to the attorney general’s office as a “so called” investigative reporter, has disclosed in his latest report that Connecticut has collected “$1.1 billion more taxes than expected last fiscal year, the same day that Gov. Dannel Malloy’s $900 million retroactive income tax increase went into effect.” Although the Malloy administration failed to reach by some $400 million the $2 billion in cost savings measures it initially had demanded from SEBAC, the coalition of state unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the administration, the tax increases the administration imposed upon nearly everyone in the state as a part of its “shared sacrifice” effort has, perhaps unsurprisingly, yielded an “unexpected” surplus. The Malloy surplus, made possible in part by an ex post facto income tax charge, should not astonish those commentators in the state who have pr...

Attorney General George Jepsen having investigated a charge made to his office by SEBAC, a coalition of unions the membership of which soon will be voting either to adopt or reject Plan A 2, that the Yankee Institute had used state the state’s e-mail system to communicate with union workers, the attorney general found that the charges against the institute were false . The comprehensive investigation by two state agencies, the attorney general’s office and the state Auditors of Public Account, Mr. Jepsen wrote in his finding, “did not show that the state e-mail system was improperly accessed or compromised in violation of state laws or policies.” “As part of our inquiry,” Mr. Jepsen wrote, “we reviewed the e-mails sent to state employees and provided by SEBAC. The first e-mail, containing the subject line 'VOTE No twice on concessions… pass it on' was sent on May 24, 2011 at 8:07 pm from 'Lawrence Jones' to a state employee. The second e-mail, containing the subject l...

One of the chief negotiators for SEBAC, the state union coalition negotiating with the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy on union contracts, Daniel Livingston, has written a letter to Attorney General George Jepsen – at one point, early in his career, a lawyer who represented unions – demanding that the attorney general “…investigate and take all appropriate actions authorized by state law” against Yankee Institute investigative reporter Zach Janowski. Mr. Janowski, Mr. Livingston wrote in his letter, “purports to be an ‘investigative reporter’ and… also publishes a blog under the name of ‘Raising Hale.’” Mr. Jepsen, however, is not asked in Mr. Livingston’s letter to investigate Mr. Janowski credentials as an “investigative reporter.” This snarky little tidbit is thrown in perhaps to degrade Mr. Janowski who, Mr. Livingston insists in his letter to Mr., Jepsen, has “degraded state workers.” Mr. Jepsen is not asked in Mr. Livingston’s fanciful and intemperate letter to inves...

Much fuss was made during the gubernatorial campaign by former Mayor of Stamford Dannel (then Dan) Malloy concerning the adoption of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the subject of Governor Malloy’s very first Executive Order. The old way of accounting, which had given rise to budget finagling that allowed governors and legislators less scrupulous than Mr. Malloy to fudge budget figures, was supposed to give way to GAAP, an accounting process that would scrub politics of distasteful gimmickry. “An implementer bill passed Tuesday by the House,” according to a story in CTNewsJunkie, “postpones the full implementation of GAAP until 2014 and eliminates the $1.5 billion deficit a transition to GAAP would create. But it also promises to spend about $100 million a year over the next 15 years starting in 2014 to pay down the $1.5 billion GAAP deficit and in order to ensure that deficit doesn’t grow it allocates about $75 million in fiscal year 2013 and $50 million in 2014.”...

Yankee Institutes investigative reporter Zach Janowski examined the IRS reports of The Universal Health Care Foundation for the last few years from 2004 through 2008 and discovered – big surprise! – that the foundation “gave more than $1.1 million dollars in grants to organizations affiliated with its own board members.” The Universal Health Care Foundation, Mr. Janowski reported, “has a unique history. It was created to settle a lawsuit by Connecticut’s public employee unions, then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and then-Comptroller Nancy Wyman against Anthem when it purchased Blue Cross and Blue Shield.” That was then. It did not take the foundation long to butter the bread of those affiliated with the Blumenthal inspired organization. Under the direction of Mr. Blumenthal, the mandate of the attorney general’s office often seemed to be the regulation of private businesses that had in some way or other run afoul of consumer protection regulations. In the course of his ...

Over at “Raising Hale,” investigative reporter for the Yankee Institute Zach Janowski lifted up another rock and found underneath it more state debt. "Connecticut’s unpaid obligation to provide healthcare benefits for retirees could reach $40 billion by 2017 if elected officials fail to act, according to a December estimate." Bottom line: “Milliman (a firm that produces estimates for the Comptroller’s office) estimated the state will owe nearly $45 billion of healthcare benefits to retirees in 2017.”

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has issued a report showing that New York fell from 49th to 50th last year among states that have the worst tax climate in the Nation. The same report shows Connecticut falling from 38th to 47th, third from the bottom, “because of a new ‘millionaire's bracket’, according to the report.” Mesmerized by a $3 billion deficit, the Democratic dominated legislature last session affixed the new “millionaire’s bracket” to its income tax, sending Connecticut, relative to other states, into free fall, assuring further flight of businesses and recent graduates to more promising states such as South Dakota, ranked best at number one in the Tax Foundation report, and Alaska, ranked number two. Zach Janowski of the Yankee Institute turned out a good report on Connecticut's fall from grace .

In the Early American Republic of blessed memory, such eminences as George Washington declined titles, much in use in England at the time. The moderns, as Zach Janowski demonstrates in “Raising Hale ,” have no such compunctions. In the 36-member Senate, there are 36 titled officials. In the more modest House, “only two out of three members gets a fancy title” – and an extra stipend to boot. The House listing by dollar is here , and the Senate listing here . Mr. Janowski unwittingly has presented a strong argument for a unicameral legislature. Such an organ of popular representation would be less titled, more broadly representative and more responsible to the sort of people Washington thought were virtuous, economical and modest.