In the best of situations, leadership is a tricky business. And leadership in the public spotlight is becoming nearly impossible.
Governor Rell’s recent performance in handing a list of well-reasoned reform recommendations to the Post Employment Reform Commission is a textbook example.
Rell organized the commission last February to make recommendations on handling the state’s massive unfunded pension liability, which stands at almost $34 billion. About three-quarters of that is in promises to provide health insurance to retired state employees; the rest is in straight pension obligation.
Finding a way to stop the bleeding is a nasty job but somebody’s got to do it. And Rell wisely saw that lifting the complex and touchy matter out of the capital’s political mud bog stood the best chance of producing a report that would get a fair hearing.
The commission quickly fell behind schedule and missed its mid-July target for reporting its findings. A revised timeline set a target of mid-September, not all that bad in terms of meaningful public task force work.
But then on Sept. 7, Rell threw a grenade into the process. Rather than wait to see what ideas percolated from the group, she unveiled her own laundry list of proposed changes. Overall, the list is sound with items likechanging to a defined contribution system, raising the age for retirement, tightening the rules that allow retirees to enhance their benefits in the final years on the payroll and increasing employee cost sharing.
But the timing was hideous and she was wide of the mark on health care costs, as the state comptroller pointed out in a subsequent letter.
Rell could have served her ideas into the process at any point. She could have handed them to the group at the front end as a proposed starting point. She could have waited to see what the commission proposed, then offered her endorsement of some of their ideas supplemented with her own. But serving a list like that into the process at the 11th hour just begs for exactly the reaction it drew.
“Looks like the report was already written and you didn’t need any of us after all,” sniffed one labor representative. Another charged the governor was playing election-year politics.
The result is that whatever the commission now recommends will bear the stains of a flawed process.
It’s a shame. Connecticut needs a thoughtful approach to this growing problem. And wasting seven months on a commission whose report is dead on arrival is a high price to pay for a tactical error.
Angels And Sausage
Those who have stood close to the legislative process often liken it to sausage making. It’s better if we don’t see what goes into it.
Take for example the angel investment tax credit passed last session.
The idea was to encourage more investment in early-stage Connecticut companies that had outgrown self-financing yet weren’t far enough along to interest venture capitalists. Angels, often wealthy individuals with a tolerance for risk, are becoming an important part of the funding ecosystem and Connecticut was at a perceived disadvantage.
A tax break was proposed but before it passed, it had been amended, twisted and mashed into something that had a $100,000 point of entry. Problem is, on average, most angels are sinking about $25,000 in any deal.
Investors and their accountants are sharp. They figured out a way to create investment pools that could meet the threshold and secure the tax credit. That works for the angels.
The question is whether it works in the long run for the state. Will it create more investment or just more pools? That calculation will take some years. But reporter Greg Bordonaro’s story today provides hope that the credit is actually producing some solid results.
It’s good to be reminded sausage can be tasty, despite the process.
