At least in theory, Connecticut’s 169 towns, plopped down in an area the size of a large playground, are interesting laboratories for experiment and change.
Of course, the state legislature works overtime to dampen the entrepreneurial spirit, with statewide mandates and laws that discourage or prohibit variations within the one, big happy family.
For example, when I purchase Voluntown, rename it “Cohenville,” and allow local grocery stores to sell wine, I will be violation of the laws of Connecticut, if not of God or common sense.
The nation’s federal system of 50 states bumping up against the theoretically limited authority of the national government is another effort to permit innovation and experimentation to flourish.
One of the idiosyncrasies that has evolved from this system of sort-of-independent fiefdoms is a political and journalistic instinct to pretend that every momentous experiment or maddening calamity is truly unique to the jurisdiction in which it occurred.
Over time, almost any success or miserable failure one may detect in Connecticut or Ohio or Wyoming has happened, and will be found, somewhere else — despite the theatrics of local politicians and tunnel vision of local journalists, to pretend otherwise.
City boosters are particularly vulnerable to the itch of pretending that they are pioneers on the leading edge of, well, almost everything. When was it that Hartford decided to be “New England’s Rising Star,” with a cute little star logo, forgetting to mention that Rapid City, S.D., was already South Dakota’s Rising Star, complete with virtually the same logo?
Hartford’s “First Thursday” walk-around-the-town-and-soak-up-the-arts thing is fine stuff, but, of course, there’s nothing unique about it. In Phoenix, it’s called “First Friday,” with free shuttles to all the art stuff. And the Scottsdale ArtWalk is held every Thursday.
When trucks with questionable brakes came barreling down Route 44 in Hartford’s western suburbs, in a crashing, killing kind of way, Connecticut launched a sort-of-vigorous truck inspection campaign — news of which prompted hilarity among the nation’s transportation gurus.
God knows, the long-haul truckers are safer as a group than the scary senior citizens, the distracted soccer moms and the pea-brained teenagers. But when various states or the federal guys rouse themselves for these occasional truck-inspection campaigns, the net always snares a bunch of drivers with lousy equipment, comically inept paperwork — and the occasional bag of marijuana.
At about the same time Connecticut was torturing is truckers, Oregon was stopping and testing 468 interstate highway truckers. Oops. Nine percent of them flunked the drug test, some with multiple drugs.
When the bodies begin to pile up in Hartford and the state cops are grudgingly called in to lend a hand, the initiative is treated with some reverence and awe — rarely mentioning that in many states, this is standard operating procedure when trouble hits the urban centers.
Even as we speak, Springfield, Mass., is all aglow from its latest dance of the state troopers, who came into the city last month, stopped every car that moved in the South End and arrested 17 bad guys on assorted drug, parole and drunk-driving charges.
The horrific home-invasion case in Cheshire generated all manner of outrage and calls for more severe penalties and restrictions on parole and probation — again, as if there were something unusual going on in Connecticut.
At the same time, citizens of Lowell, Mass., were shaking their heads at a home-invasion incident in which a man broke into a home at 4 a.m. and attempted to rape a 15-year-old girl. At the same time, a burglar on Long Island broke into a home, confronted the owner, bit off his ear and then smashed him in the head with a karaoke machine. And neither of those cases had anything to do with whether Connecticut is strict with its parolees, or whether home-invasion in Connecticut is a felony, a misdemeanor or a sacrament.
In a moment of inadvertent truth and wisdom, state Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams had it about right when, in response to a question about the state’s shabby budget process, he said: “I don’t think Connecticut is different than any other state.”
That’s not true for everything, of course. But it is true much more often than the politicians and press let on.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
