Political reporter Brian Lockhart of the Connecticut Post in Bridgeport wrote the other day about the difficulty in getting Democratic state legislators to comment on state government’s need to obtain more financial concessions from the state employee unions. Even the leaders of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly always plead that the concessions issue belongs exclusively to the head of the executive branch, the governor — which is pretty lame, considering that the legislature has to approve not only the state budget but also individual state employee union contracts.
So Lockhart found it notable that he was able to extract from the Senate chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, something more than the usual evasion about the unions. Harp remarked, “I would be interested in their considering additional concessions. I think it would help us out a lot.”
This comment was notable indeed, the more so for how pathetic it was. For it raised a few questions: Just who is the government of Connecticut, the representative of the whole people and the public interest? Do the people of Connecticut really have to ask the unions of their employees for permission to have a government? Is this asking of permission some requirement of the state Constitution? Is state government really so powerless in regard to the biggest single expense of state and municipal government, personnel?
Actually, the problem is only one of political will. State government had the power to create the problem and retains the power to eliminate it. For the public employee unions exist only by virtue of statute that authorizes collective bargaining for them, a statute that could be repealed or suspended. And the unions gain disproportionate power in the government through another statute, the state law requiring binding arbitration of public employee union contracts, a law that removes government’s biggest single expense from the democratic process.
Those statutes were not enacted to serve the public interest but rather, like so many other statutes, to serve the special interest. Democratic legislators and governors in years past saw in collective bargaining and binding arbitration for public employees an opportunity to make powerful political allies. Repeal or suspend those statutes and state government could regain control of its finances and restore democracy without having to ask anyone’s permission.
All it would require from the legislature would be a little self-respect and respect for the public. But most legislators remain too cowed by the monster they created and continue to feed.
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Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
