Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Fasano and Looney “The numbers add up. I’m here to solve problems — not to study problems. ... Let’s get this thing started in an honest and comprehensive way.”   -- Governor Lamont to Connecticut's media. Democrats may have been thinking that among the many blessings Connecticut’s overtaxed citizens should thank  God for this past Thanksgiving was – tolls. We are told that Governor Ned Lamont and “legislators” – read, Democrat legislators -- had decided, during a closed conference two days before Thanksgiving, to present a trucks only tolls “compromise” bill to the General Assembly before Christmas. And a Merry Christmas to you too. This may seem, in Yogi Berra’s memorable phrase, like “deja vu all over again” to folks gathered around the Thanksgiving table this year, many of whom have arrived in Connecticut from less tax predatory states. Connecticut’s state and local tax burden is 12.6%, second in the nation behind New York, according to a 2019 rep...

Martin Looney There is no indication that any of the various toll plans offered during the past year were ever palatable to a majority of Connecticut voters. During the second week of November, Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney at long last took the hint. “I think we need to find something that is broadly palatable in the General Assembly and also to the public,” he said. The shelving of tolls – for now – does not mean that some other toll plan may not be advanced after the upcoming elections by a Democrat dominated General Assembly always hungry for new revenue streams. A new revenue source would relieve the General Assembly, responsible for all getting and spending in Connecticut, of the necessity, ever more apparent, of cutting spending, the alternative to raising taxes. Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff noted, “I think we all want to move forward on a [transportation improvement] plan, we just have got to figure out how to fund it.”

Like a quiescent vampire snoozing by night in his coffin, the prospect of tolls, which the No Tolls CT group thought it had slain, is now showing signs of new life. This may be Governor Ned Lamont’s third or fourth – one loses count – toll proposal iteration. According to a story in a Hartford paper, Lamont is proposing tolls only on bridges “ as low as 40 to 80 cents under revised plan .” What a bargain, as compared with his previous proposals. Lamont, during his campaign for governor, first proposed a trucks only toll on numerous gantries – one loses count. The No Tolls CT movement -- perhaps the first real populist, in the sense of popular, movement in Connecticut since the much abused Tea Party movement a decade past – pretty much slayed the toll dragon after Lamont, now elected governor, expanded his proposal to include pretty much anyone in the state traveling on   a major highway. The Tea Party movement was more or less buried under an avalanche of spending and cor...

Gail Lavielle You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abe Lincoln If Governor Ned Lamont -- approval rating at the end of April 33 percent -- fails re-election to a second term in 2023, the inscription on his political tombstone may well read, “He flopped when he should have flipped.” The serial mistakes of the Lamont administration so far are beginning to look alarmingly like incompetence. Rep. Gail Lavielle of Wilton , a former ranking member of the Education Committee and now a ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, not easily appalled, said she was appalled at the process deployed by the Lamont administration to select the Commissioner of the State Board of Education.

Lamont Looney Aresimowicz Clever frogs know how to take a step back so that they might advance two steps forward. Governor Ned Lamont met recently with the governors of two contiguous states, Rhode Island and Massachusetts to palaver about infrastructure maintenance. A fierce middle class taxpayer opposition to tolling in Connecticut has given the governor and the two Democrat gate-keepers in the General Assembly, Senate President Martin Looney and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, political hiccups. Lamont began pushing for tolls during his election campaign for governor. In that campaign, Republican nominee for governor  Bob Stefanowski  was widely derided by Democrats and critics in the state’s media for centering his campaign on a pledge to do away with Connecticut’s income tax over a ten year period. Pressing on, Stefanowski said his pledge was aspirational and, once accomplished, would reset Connecticut in New England’s crown as a haven from excessive t...

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… W. B. Yeats  It seems ages ago that a major newspaper in Connecticut firmly decided that Connecticut was suffering from a spending rather than a revenue problem; meaning that budget deficits in the future should be liquidated by spending cuts and not tax increases. Naturally, few politicians, chiefly those on the Democrat side of the political barricades, paid much attention to this change of heart and mind. Faced with chronic and continuing budget deficits – the state’s present biennial budget deficit is about $4 billion – Connecticut’s Democrat politicians continued piling on tax increases. Former Governor Dan Malloy, who retired from office following his second term, was a chronic revenue increaser, aided, of course, by a Democrat dominated General Assembly. Malloy’s approval rating plummeted more or less in concert with his tax increases, and he left office the least popular gov...