Government in Connecticut does one thing well: snowplowing. While 2 inches of snow can send Washington, D.C., into comic panic and paralysis, Connecticut plays through even a foot or more of snow and can push it out of the way and be back in business in 24 hours.
Still, even in normal winters the snow is a drag here, and now, with heavy snow seeming to come nearly every week, it is more than a drag. It may be reducing economic output by 10 or 20 percent. Many people feel as if they are going to work mainly so they can earn money to pay someone to plow their driveway so they can go to work again.
Of course Connecticut long has managed despite having three terrible months each year. But that is because the state offered advantages offsetting that disadvantage.
On the whole for the last 25 years, since its enactment of an income tax, Connecticut has been losing population relative to the rest of the country, and the other day the Census Bureau reported that the state’s population is back in absolute numerical decline as well.
Reflecting recently on state government’s continuing budget deficits despite a record tax increase, budget director Ben Barnes said Connecticut has entered “a period of permanent fiscal crisis.” His candor could be appreciated but Barnes also was confessing failure — confessing that state government’s policies have not been making Connecticut more prosperous but rather have been impoverishing it.
The excessive snow will make many state residents reconsider their premises for living here. To encourage them to stay put, state government better start reconsidering some of its premises as well.
Timid Republicans
Leaders of the Republican minority in the General Assembly recently made a show of their desire to get Governor Malloy to listen to their ideas for reducing the state budget deficit. They even induced the governor to have lunch with them in the cafeteria of the Legislative Office Building so they might be photographed.
At lunch the governor invited Republicans to put their budget-cutting ideas in writing and send them along to him. But the Republican leaders don’t want to do that. Rather, they say they want to be included in confidential negotiations on the budget with the governor and the leaders of the legislature’s Democratic majority, because, the Republican leaders say, such confidentiality has more success with budget cutting.
Actually, such confidentiality succeeds most in providing the Republicans with political cover for any serious spending reductions that they might support publicly only if the Democrats shared responsibility.
As theirs is the party of government’s ever-increasing dependents, many Democrats are fairly candid about never wanting to economize seriously. But while Republicans pose as the party of financial restraint, mostly they just complain about excessive spending without ever specifying anything substantial that should be sacrificed or any expensive policy that should be changed, lest they offend some special interest, especially the government employee unions, which could hardly be more supportive of the Democrats but still manage to intimidate the Republicans out of relevance anyway.
Malloy was right to tell the Republicans to mail it in. But they will put on paper little for which they could be held accountable. Controlling spending and alienating government’s dependents will be entirely the governor’s problem when he proposes his budget in a few days. Of course he’ll get no help from his own party either.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
