A report calling for significant tax increases to pay for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s ambitious 30-year, $100 billion transportation initiative just days after General Electric announced it was fleeing was the exact wrong message.
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Call it bad timing, poor planning, or ignorant politics, but the release of a report calling for significant tax increases in Connecticut to pay for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's ambitious 30-year, $100 billion transportation initiative just days after General Electric announced it was fleeing the state was the exact wrong message to send taxpayers and the rest of the country.
Connecticut's economic record and prospects are under national scrutiny right now, and how lawmakers respond to General Electric's departure, and the state's enduring fiscal crisis and lackluster business climate, will be a topic of conversation — and a key component of decision making — in boardrooms throughout the state.
The prospect of tolls, higher gas and sales taxes, and new user-based fees for drivers doesn't reinforce the idea that lawmakers will make the state a better place for businesses to operate.
We understand this issue is complicated. We agree with Malloy that the state needs to invest more in transportation to make it safer and easier for businesses to move goods and people across the state and to provide better connectivity to key centers of commerce including New York City and Boston.
We also need to better connect UConn's Storrs campus, with Farmington and New Haven, which each serve as the type of research and technology hubs that GE sought in its move to Boston.
We support the Transportation Finance Panel's, and Malloy's, call for a constitutional lockbox that forbids lawmakers from raiding transportation funds to fill gaps in the general budget. However, we can't support a $100 billion spending plan, and the myriad tax increases likely to come with it, until the Democratic governor and General Assembly have a real economic development and state finance plan in place that will balance the budget long-term and provide a stable business environment that promotes private investment in Connecticut.
This will require a reinvention of state, and potentially local, government and difficult decisions that our current political class hasn't shown the ability to make. Just as GE is transforming itself from an industrial giant to a digital-technology company to meet the demands of a 21st-centry economy, Connecticut state government must do the same.
And this can't be accomplished by simply throwing more loans and grants at big or small businesses hoping they keep or grow jobs in the state, because when government picks winners it has unintentional consequences including alienating companies that don't get a piece of the corporate greenmail while their competitors do (General Electric was miffed with the state's continued investment in and support of Pratt & Whitney, a GE competitor).
The legislature should bring in outside consultants to do an up-and-down, year-long review of the entire state government apparatus, and provide recommendations on how to re-build an organization that is financially stable and supports economic growth. We also need a legislative body with the backbone to implement those changes.
All ideas must be on the table, from the elimination or privatization of state agencies to a complete overhaul of our tax structure. We need a big-picture view of our state's strengths and weaknesses and then a comprehensive plan on how to leverage the former and reverse the latter.
We must also consider establishing a smaller, full-time professional legislature that can better understand and tackle the issues of a complex 21st-century world. A legislature that convenes only a few months a year and provides short-term fixes to long-term problems has proven ineffective as evidence by Connecticut's continued deficits.
Before taxpayers are stuck with another grandiose economic development plan with a hefty price tag, we urge Malloy and legislative leaders to take a step back and examine, with the help of outside experts, the state's current fiscal and economic prospects, and deliver a more thoughtful, comprehensive approach to running state government.
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