Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Lowell Weicker CTMirror has put to bed – “debunked” – one hopes forever, the notion that the 1991 Weicker income tax was intended to be temporary. No doubt most people, when the tax was enacted, knew in their bones that nothing is so permanent as a temporary tax.

According to a story in a Hartford paper , the city’s mayor, Luke Bronin, a rising star in state politics, “declined to comment on the dispute” between Hartford teachers and their nominal patron, the Hartford Board of Education. The dispute is about contracts and the inability of the people of Hartford to finance years of overspending. A few months ago, Bronin, unable to meet his contractual obligations, sought a bailout from state taxpayers. Bronin leapt from the Malloy administration frying pan, where he served as Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief council, directly into the fire as mayor of a city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and his former boss was only too happy to bail out his protege by flooding the city with state tax balm. The Hartford school board is seeking concession from teacher union representatives, and the concessions will, if ever they bear fruit, make future state bailouts less burdensome to an all-Democrat political he...