Posts published in “Connecticut Newspapers”

Governor Ned Lamont may not make it to the general election in his bid for a third term. His Democrat primary opponent, progressive Josh Elliot, just released a very compelling political advertisement, suggesting an aggressive campaign against Lamont, a self-described “moderate.”

Progressives across the nation are having their moment. Democrat socialists like Elliot have upset even liberal Democrat incumbents in multiple recent primaries, most notably in neighboring New York City. Progressives are energized. They will turn out big in the state’s August primary.

The Democrat power structure, aka public sector unions, may be having heartburn after just endorsing Lamont over Elliot at the recent AFLCIO convention. The union bosses may have to call members back from August vacations to rescue Lamont.

An Elliot surge and a manifestly weakened Lamont is a huge opportunity for GOP candidate, Ryan Fazio.

Fazio has been planning to run on the general issue of affordability. He needs a sharper angle.

Actually, there is a potent new affordability issue for Fazio, about which he has already spoken quite eloquently: state employee over-compensation. State workers are the highest paid in the 50 states: the second-highest wages and the best benefits by far.

A month ago, U.S. Census released data showing that Connecticut paid its state employees an average of $101,500 in 2025, the second highest wages in the 50 states.

The news of wages moving from five figures to six figures, cresting $100,000 for the first time, grabbed widespread attention.

Stunning as the news was, the average is anonymous numbers. Who is making one hundred grand? Who is getting a 60% pay hike? Who is making the second highest wages in the 50 states?

Fortunately, Census provides some broad answers. Census breaks down the headcount and payroll figures for the 50 states into 36 functional categories.

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..

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.

There appears to be a misconception among Connecticut Democrats and the media that Republicans have abandoned their call for a state employee wage freeze.

Most Senate Republicans did vote last week for a wage increase for the state’s lowest-paid workers in the Service & Maintenance NP-2 union. According to data from the State Comptroller, about 600 of the 3,600 NP-2 workers are custodians who made an average of about $42,000 last fiscal year. That’s only $9,000 above the federal poverty line for a family of four.

There’s a world of difference between voting to raise the pay of state workers who qualify for food stamps and approving a raise for the rest of state workers making an average of $95,000.

Governor Lamont has yet to announce actual new contracts for more than three-quarters of the state workforce. He claims to have reached tentative agreements with 10 more unions with a combined 20,000 employees (out of almost 50,000).

Conventionally, Connecticut governors negotiate omnibus wage contracts for state employees with the State Employee Bargaining Alliance Coalition (SEBAC), an umbrella group comprised of over 30 union bargaining units representing most state employees. Not Ned Lamont, not this year.

Most of the state’s nearly 50,000 employees have been working without a wage contract since the last omnibus, so-called SEBAC 2022, expired last June. Until this week, Lamont had struck deals with only the state police (not members of SEBAC) and three small “law and order” SEBAC units, which the General Assembly approved without much notice.

Now, Lamont has submitted a larger contract covering about 4,000 Service and Maintenance employees (bargaining unit “NP-2”) for a vote in the General Assembly this week. Yesterday, the House approved it; today, the Senate votes. That will leave over 40,000 employees still awaiting a new contract.

Why the piecemeal approach?

Likely, because ...

The “Lamont Decade” is shaping up to be a golden age for state employees, with Lamont poised to deliver workers a whopping 60% pay raise or a $2.7 billion payroll increase from $4.6 billion to $7.3 billion over ten years. That’s for slightly less than 50,000 employees.

He needs to be stopped right now. Next November's election will be too late. Even if defeated, Lamont will have left an indelibly disastrous imprint on the state.

Lamont wants to give union members four more years of robust 4.5% annual pay raises, a deal identical to the one he gave them four years ago, which followed two years of 5.5% increases. These ten increases compound to about 60%.

The first 6 years have already delivered state employees a 33% compound wage increase.

This would not just be a massive payroll increase. Pension obligations would skyrocket.

Some news media coverage of Connecticut state employee compensation misinforms the public. Periodic news articles titillate readers with the pay of the state’s highest earners. Yet, six high-paid UCONN athletic coaches and 33 high-paid UCONN Health doctors are not the reason that the overall state payroll has exploded under Governor Lamont.

The problem is that Lamont is giving away the farm. He has awarded the unionized workforce six consecutive annual wage increases that have driven up pay by a stunning 33%. And he is poised to award a seventh. Instead, he should freeze wages.