Governor Lamont gave an interview to CT Examiner last Tuesday, in which he was asked: “After annual pay raises for state employees amounting to 33 percent since 2019, would you consider a wage freeze similar to one put in place by your predecessor, Dannel Malloy…” His answers were glib and uninformed.
Number One: His first response was to say, “I have a hard time hiring.”
No. He has had no difficulty whatsoever. 15 months ago in December 2023, Dan Haar of Hearst Media wrote an article entitled “CT state hiring is up sharply.” Haar stated:
“So, in just one year [through September 2023], Jeffrey R. Beckham, the OPM secretary and the governor’s top budget official, told legislators in an in-person session, Connecticut agencies not including the judicial and legislative branches hired a net new 2,000 workers.”
Haar was focused only on a part of the workforce called “the executive workforce,” which reached 26,600 full-time employees that September, about equal to its pre-pandemic level. That’s an 8.1% expansion in just twelve months, suggesting that Lamont had not (and has not) had a “hard time hiring.”
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Number Two: Next, Lamont said: “Maybe some of your readers [would say] ‘God these guys are so overpaid, and they got this amazing pension, and everybody will kill to be a state employee.’”
CT state employees are the highest paid in the 50 states.
Wages: CT state employees have the second-highest wages (behind California).
Related Content: The Case for a Wage Freeze
Health Care on the Job: CT state employees are tied with California for the most generous coverage per a recent study. They pay only 2% of their medical bills.
Health Care in Retirement (so-called OPEB benefits): Once again, CT state employees are tied with California for the most generous coverage.
Related Content: Free Health Care for CT State Employees
Pensions: Retired CT state employees have the highest pension benefit: $45,691 in FY2023 vs. second-place Colorado retirees receiving $41,152, according to the Boston College Center for Retirement. Lamont’s predecessor did make progress reforming pensions, so CT’s lead may diminish.
“Some readers” are correct. Lamont appears clueless.
Number Three: Then, Lamont ticked off various jobs for which he claimed again to have difficulty hiring: nurses, state police, corrections officers and transportation engineers. Even if stipulating that he is correct, the solution is to offer better pay for those specific jobs, not a general wage increase for the entire state workforce.
Number Four: Lamont said he needed transportation engineers to qualify for federal infrastructure money. Fair enough. But he went on “and also to hold down unemployment.” It is not clear what Lamont was thinking; but, on its face, this remark suggests that Lamont thinks of state government as an employer of last resort.
Number Five: Lamont said “I can’t just unilaterally zero out people and say you’ve got enough.” Why not? His predecessor Democrat Dannel Malloy “zeroed out” state employees three times.” 33% is enough.
Related Content: Time for a State Employee Wage Freeze
Number Six: Lamont continued, saying “Remember, we’ve had pretty good inflation the last six years as well.” Inflation over the period was 25%, according to the CPI Calculator on the U.S. Bureau of Labor homepage. CT state employees have surged ahead of inflation. Private sector wages increased only 23% nationally.
Number Seven: The 33% wage increase does not include the several thousand dollars in “pensionable bonuses” that Lamont paid all employees in 2022 nor the $1,000 in average pandemic pay he paid them in 2023.
Number Eight: Lamont claims to have made “progress on pensions,” yet progress has been minimal. Pension liabilities are up $9 billion from $34 billion to $43 billion under Lamont. Pensions are based on wages; when wages go up, so do pensions. Pension fund assets are up $11 billion, yielding only $2 billion of progress, despite the Volatility Cap having directed $6 billion of extra money into the pension fund.
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Number Nine: Lamont just imposed a hiring freeze for the remaining three and a half months of the current fiscal year to curtail spending to stay within the constitutional spending cap. It does not sound like he’s having trouble hiring; it sounds like he’s hiring too many too fast.
Related Content: Lamont’s Stealth Hiring Freeze
Number Ten: Lamont fails to see that massive growth in state employee pay is crowding out other on-budget spending within the constitutional spending cap, despite that he has moved or proposed to move over $500 million off-budget to alleviate the squeeze: early childhood programs (H.B. 5003 and H.B. 6867), funding for non-profits (H.B. 1453), and special education aid to municipalities (H.B. 7163).
Number Eleven: State employee compensation is the largest single cost in state operations, exceeding $10 billion annually. Lamont’s new two-year budget sets aside $500 million for wage increases and projects that fringe benefits will increase $740 million. That represents 55% of the overall spending increase allowed under the constitutional spending cap.
Number Twelve: Apparently, Lamont does not perceive the incongruity of the state paying its workforce the highest compensation of the 50 states, while ranking as the worst state in terms of fiscal/financial condition.
Related Content: CT: In Worst Financial Shape, Yet Paying State Employees Top Dollar
Lamont sounds, and is, out of touch and incompetent.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.