This week was Tax Week. Fittingly, Connecticut taxpayers found out why their taxes are so high and why various new taxes keep popping up (such as public benefits charges on utility bills).
Thursday, the U.S. Census released new data showing average Connecticut state employee wages in 2025 were $101,500, the second highest of the 50 states – second only to California. That’s more than 15% higher than the national average of $87,750 for state employees (about 24% higher than the national average excluding California). It takes a lot of tax revenue to pay such high wages.
The Census data debunks the myth of state employee sacrifice before Lamont first took office in 2018. Despite the wage freezes imposed by his predecessor, Democrat Dannel Malloy, Connecticut state employee wages ranked second highest in the nation in 2018.
Nevertheless, on Monday, Governor Lamont poured gas on the fire, submitting proposed contracts awarding unionized state employees another raft of robust pay increases.
The consistent second-place ranking results from the 33% wage increase that Lamont has already paid unionized state employees as well as the salary increases he has extended to higher-paid non-union employees, primarily in managerial positions.
Now, the Governor plans to give unionized state employees another four years of 4.5% annual wage increases which, together with the trailing 33%, will compound to about a 60% pay hike in the decade following his first inauguration – a truly stunning increase!
The state employee gravy train cannot get much richer… and, prospectively, state taxpayers much poorer, at least those who stick around too long. Migration out of state continues and will likely accelerate, mitigated for a while by some people fleeing the socialist experiment next door in New York City.
On Monday, the Governor submitted to the General Assembly the State Employees Bargaining Alliance Coalition (SEBAC) 2026 Agreement (“SEBAC 2026”), covering over 30 union bargaining units with almost 50,000 employees. General Assembly approval is foreordained. Union-friendly Democrats hold super-majorities in both houses of the Assembly.
The new U.S. Census data covers all state employees, not just those in unions. Accordingly, it captures political appointees, professionals such as UCONN athletic coaches and doctors in the UCONN Health system and judges in the state court system, as well as the ranks of non-unionized managerial positions in the state workforce, who, all combined, number roughly 9,000.
Some of the non-unionized employees are paid extremely well, as we can conclude from the difference between the average 2025 pay reported in the actuarial report of the state pension fund covering primarily unionized employees – about $95,000 – and the newly reported Census number of $101,500.
There are some scandalous examples of super-rich pay packages that Lamont has given to political appointees. The most infamous is Terrence Cheng, chancellor of Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, who resigned under pressure in March 2025 after his lavish personal spending on the state’s dime was revealed. The Connecticut Inside Investigator (CII) revealed that, six months later, Cheng was still on the state payroll, making $442,000 in his new role as Strategic Adviser to the oversight board of CSCU, despite never having attended any meetings of the board.
Then there’s a growing number of quasi-public entities about which CII has also reported. CII reports that the head of CT Innovations made $680,000 in 2025, quite a lot for running an entity with a mere $41.5 million in assets, mostly unaudited state investments in companies promising to create or expand businesses in-state and to employ specified numbers of state citizens. There’s also the Connecticut Green Bank, which is funded primarily by the public benefits charge on utility bills, whose head made $330,000 in 2025.
The real value of the Census data is that it provides critical context. Connecticut state employee wages can be evaluated on an apples-to-apples basis in comparison with peers in other states within a 50-state context. This can be useful to correct for union attempts to justify union pay levels inappropriately by using comparisons to high pay in certain jobs in the private sector.
For example, why should Connecticut corrections employees be paid 20% more than the national average? Perhaps because the state’s cost of living is higher than the national average. Yet, that cannot explain why Connecticut corrections employees are paid almost 10% more than their peers in neighboring Massachusetts.
What really needs explanation is why Lamont keeps awarding even more pay raises to state employees, unionized and not, who are already better paid than all but their counterparts in California? There is a developing rallying cry of resistance to continuing pay raises: Don’t Californify Connecticut!
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.