What in the world happened to Gov. M. Jodi Rell? Last year, she was the picture of the calm, competent leader needed by the state of Connecticut. That image helped her glide through a seemingly effortless gubernatorial election. But ever since, she appears to have taken the train to Muddleville.
She convened a bunch of business execs to work on a health insurance plan. Then she ignored them. Then she announced her own plan. Then she failed to get anyone to back it. Then she announced a big education initiative. Then she did nothing to get it passed. Then she called for a huge tax increase. Then she realized she didn’t need one. She pulled together an entire cadre to look at reforming the judiciary. Then she ignored her own commission’s recommendations. When the legislature drafted a bill based on her own group’s suggestions, she threatened to veto it.
Our governor appears hopelessly out of touch with reality these days. She pipes up to claim credit for small, feel-good things – like getting a handful of federal dollars freed up for damage done during a spring storm – but is largely ineffectual in making anything substantial work. And the proposals that she is making seem ill thought out.
Take, for example, her announcement last week that she has directed the state Department of Transportation to look at every possible means for getting train service expanded… into New York City’s Penn Station.
For those of us sitting in Hartford last week, that announcement seemed like a direct slap in the face. Southern Connecticut is already well served by MetroNorth, which delivers its teeming masses daily to Grand Central Station. The trains currently going to Penn Station are Amtrak trains.
MetroNorth trains run into and out of New York City on a schedule measured in minutes. Amtrak runs on a schedule so frustratingly inconvenient that it’s measured in clumps of hair yanked from the noggin.
Rell may well be interested in getting Fairfield County residents faster service access to Penn Station, from which connector trains to New Jersey run. After all, right now most commuters have to train into Grand Central and then take a 10 minute subway shuttle to Penn Station.
But before we try to fix this 10 minute problem, it would be nice to hear the governor talking about fixing the miserable, all-but-nonexistent rail service between Hartford and New Haven. How about putting real effort at ramping up a commuter rail between Hartford and Springfield, Mass.? With that one, we could even have a rail stop at Bradley International Airport.
That would be visionary. That would add tremendous value to the region. It would cut down on carbon emission. It would push down overall commuting costs. It would tie the economies of competing towns closer together. It would open up the labor market. It would grow the Central Connecticut region.
Alas, the governor instead is putting the weight of her office behind an initiative that not only serves to fix what is at best an inconvenient problem, but is one that is designed to scoot people out of the state, not bring them into it.
“Connecticut commuters have waited patiently for years for expanded service,” Gov. Rell said in announcing her plan, failing to note that she’s only addressing commuters who already have some form of rail service, while ignoring those who have none.
Rell added that, “we have moved aggressively over the past three years to create a commuter rail system of which we can all be proud.” All, that is, as long as you don’t live anywhere on the I-91 corridor. Rell is no longer talking about grand plans, she’s just tooting her horn on what appears to be an aimless journey.
