A State of the State address can take many forms. There’s the hard-charging advocacy for a new vision. There’s the ‘let’s reason together’ plea for non-partisan problem solving. There’s the grandstanding appeal to patriotism and populism. And there’s the ‘these are perilous times’ approach.
This year, Governor Malloy whipped up a personalized recipe that drew from every flavor and yet ended up sounding hollow.
It’s clear that in a time of budget crisis — and make no mistake, Connecticut’s budget is in crisis — it would be good business to focus on policy questions rather than programs. And so it is with Malloy’s urgency to address some aspect of gun control in the aftermath of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
It’s also a good time to talk about codifying a grand energy plan that places great faith in natural gas and relies on user fees rather than state monies.
These are legitimate and timely issues but they don’t address Job One, which is getting the state’s budget in balance. And while each will cause some loud dust-ups in the Capitol, none will distract the strongest lobbies from pushing their dollars-and-cents interests.
The hospitals want back the money they lost during the special session. Municipalities are circling like lionesses protecting their cubs — or, in this case, fat state subsidy payments. Advocates for the poor want higher taxes on the wealthy and elimination of a slew of business tax credits and loopholes. They will join with labor in wanting to revisit an increase to the minimum wage, even as Congress wrestles with the same issue on the national stage. Business, of course, wants to resist all this but remains outgunned in this blue state.
And here’s the governor speaking softly about tough choices ahead yet not seeming to carry any stick at all.
The State of the State speech is a time to talk broad and lofty strategy; the budget address is the time to talk nitty-gritty tactics. By leaving all the heavy lifting until next month’s budget presentation, Malloy opens himself to some further speculation. Is he short of ideas? Is he having trouble lining up support for his vision? Or is he just in denial — hoping those revenue projections perk up just enough that he can balance the budget with the kind of smoke-and-mirrors budgeting that he so derided as a candidate.
This seemed a moment to prepare the ground for what comes next. What are the hard choices he envisions? Is he going to drag municipalities kicking and screaming into cost-effective consolidation? Is he willing to let tuition rise more than 10 percent at the state’s fiscally squeezed colleges? More prison closings? A hiring freeze?
It’s a wonderful thing to be respectful to a state’s population still in mourning after an unspeakable catastrophe. It’s nice to invoke the elusive spirit of nonpartisan legislative compromise. But what’s left is a hollow message devoid of substance.
Malloy’s best lines were saved for praising the legislature for being better than Congress. That’s an astonishingly low bar. Certainly there’s a bumper sticker in ‘CT: Better than D.C.’ But its sales won’t balance the budget.
The empty State of the State is not a problem on its own. Rather, it’s a missed opportunity. And for a state in deep trouble — and for a governor moving toward a re-election battle against the man he barely beat before signing the state’s largest tax increase — opportunities are running short.
