The outcome was never in doubt. Democrats were always going to vote to approve excessive, unfair and unsustainable wage increases for Connecticut state employees, and they did. What the left-leaning media in the state expected to happen, did not. GOP opposition to the raises did not collapse.
All but one GOP senator voted against the $2 billion of raises contained in the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) contracts. All but a handful of GOP House members voted “no.”
Wednesday’s proceedings were a text-book illustration of how power corrupts. With their super-majorities, Democrats ran rough-shod over the state citizens. Not only did they place the heavy burden of funding the raises on the state’s taxpayers, but they did so using a page from former U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s playbook. In Pelosi’s era in Washington, it was called an “omnibus,” namely a bill containing so many different issues that Pelosi once said, “We’ll have to pass it before we can find out what’s in it.”
On Wednesday, Connecticut Democrats forced a vote on 35 different labor contracts all wrapped up in one bundle. In the House debate, GOP Representative Tammy Nuccio referred to it as an “airline carrier,” i.e. a bill carrying so many passengers or freight (contracts) that it was impossible to exercise reasoned judgment on any of the contracts. She said there might have been contracts she would have approved. GOP Senator Cicarella, a former corrections officer, expressed the same concern in the Senate debate.
In the end, both Nuccio and Cicarella cast “no” votes, ultimately deciding the bad outweighed the good.
In the aggregate, the 35 SEBAC contracts are certainly very bad. Even before approval of these contracts, the average wage of Connecticut state employees topped $100,000, as reported last week by the U.S. Census Bureau based upon data it collected from the Comptroller in Connecticut and those in all other states. The Census data shows our state employees with the second highest wages, at 15% to 25% above the national average, depending upon whether or not you include first-place California.
As Senator Ryan Fazio pointed out, California is no place to emulate with a mass exodus leaving that state. Census data for net domestic migration shows that, last year, over 225,000 more Californians moved out of that state than moved in from other states. Fazio pointed out that California has the highest taxes and the highest poverty rate of the 50 states. Fazio ended his remarks in opposition to the contracts by saying “I would borrow from the old TV show and say ‘Don’t Californicate my Connecticut.’”
GOP Representative Tina Courpas focused on the unsustainable character of the SEBAC package. She pointed out that states ranking nearest to Connecticut on wages have funded the generous compensation paid their employees. Not Connecticut. According to the latest actuarial report, the state pension fund had a funded ratio of only about 60%. New York, with third-place wages, has a pension funding ratio of 88%, according to the Connecticut Scoreboard which we at The Townsend Group maintain for Nutmeg Research. Courpas pointed out that, with Democrats raising the Volatility Cap, less tax revenue will top it and be deposited into the pension fund.
Even before the House session considering the SEBAC contracts, Minority Leader Vincent Candelora held a press conference in which he highlighted the huge amounts of money involved and questioned whether there will be money to fund the raises in future years.
A reporter asked him “where do you get those numbers,” when Candelora said the contract would cost “a billion dollars next year.” The reporter seemed to be challenging the scale of the number Candelora cited. The actual numbers on page one of the official cost estimate total $2 billion in additional wage cost over the four years of the contracts. That’s on top of last year’s (FY2025) total wage cost was $6.0 billion. Candelora clarified that he meant “next year” as in next year’s new biennial [two-year] budget covering FY27 and FY28, for which the estimated additional cost is $1.1 billion.
Candelora went on to explain to the press the power of compounding, referring to the 33% wage increase that employees have already received under Lamont. With the additional four years under the new SEBAC contracts, he noted that the compound increase will be about 60%ish.
Again, the outcome was never in doubt. Democrats cowered in fear of the all-powerful unions and voted as a block, with no exceptions, for the raises.
In contrast, the GOP caucuses in both houses of the Assembly voted overwhelmingly against Lamont’s SEBAC wage hikes. The GOP not only voted “no,” but articulated their opposition with knowledge, judgment and facts.
The overwhelming and reasoned GOP opposition must have come as a big surprise to certain members of the press corps in Hartford, given the newspaper headline a month ago in March saying “GOP opposition to state employee raises disappears.”
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.