Posts published in “Connecticut Newspapers”

Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget is chock-full of contradictions and nonsensical fantasies, none more dramatic than his transportation agenda and his tolls proposal.

Lamont says the Special Transportation Fund (STF) is going broke. The STF, which finances all transportation projects and operations, has a balance of about $325 million right now. So what does Lamont do? He eliminates $1.2 billion of STF funding over the next five years. Then, he insists that we need tolls as “additional revenue.”

Remember the Democrats’ plans to force the consolidation of school districts statewide? The plans were met with a firestorm of opposition in February.

Governor Lamont claims he’s heard the hue and cry, and has revised his consolidation proposal (Bill No. 874) to make it voluntary, proposing to use financial incentives, instead of force, to encourage towns to consolidate schools.

Certain bank branches are robbed repeatedly, but none as regularly as Connecticut has been raiding its hospitals for enormous tax payments – ever since former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy began the practice in 2011.

There was supposed to be tax abatement this year, but, now, Gov. Ned Lamont proposes to continue the raids to close almost half of the $1.5 billion deficit for next fiscal year’s $20 billion budget.

You may wonder why the state is taxing hospitals.

Here’s why. The hospitals are actually collateral damage. The real target is the U.S. Treasury via the Medicaid program.

The tax-and-spend impulse is so deeply embedded in Connecticut Democrats, it should be considered a genetic trait.

Take Gov. Ned Lamont. At the beginning of his budget address Feb. 20, he warned of a $3.7 billion two-year deficit, saying, “The fiscal crisis before us is not just a short-term hole in the budget. We are digging that hole deeper by $400 to $500 million annually due to fixed costs, such as pensions.”

After that opening, he gave lip service to solving the fixed-costs problem, and, then proposed a paid family-and-medical-leave program, “funded via a payroll tax on employees of approximately 0.5 percent, which will raise an estimated $400 million annually” – in other words, a new program costing the equivalent of those fixed costs.

The tax-and-spend impulse is so deeply embedded in Connecticut Democrats, it should be considered a genetic trait.

Take Gov. Ned Lamont. At the beginning of his budget address Feb. 20, he warned of a $3.7 billion two-year deficit, saying, “The fiscal crisis before us is not just a short-term hole in the budget. We are digging that hole deeper by $400 to $500 million annually due to fixed costs, such as pensions.”

After that opening, he gave lip service to solving the fixed-costs problem, and, then proposed a paid family-and-medical-leave program, “funded via a payroll tax on employees of approximately 0.5 percent, which will raise an estimated $400 million annually” – in other words, a new program costing the equivalent of those fixed costs.

After that opening, he gave lip service to solving the fixed-costs problem, and, then proposed a paid family-and-medical-leave program, “funded via a payroll tax on employees of approximately 0.5 percent, which will raise an estimated $400 million annually” – in other words, a new program costing the equivalent of those fixed costs.

In a Feb. 12 address to the Waterbury Regional Chamber, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont conceded the state’s huge pension and other, related debt is a larger problem than he anticipated. Really?

Countless people have used “unsustainable” and “unaffordable” to describe the state’s pension and health-care obligations under agreements with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC). What did Lamont think those adjectives meant?

Beware politicians trying to limit transparency in government, especially when they want to maintain their own access to information but deny it to the public.

One such effort is underway in Hartford, where Proposed Bill 5507 would make voter registration data available only to “candidates, candidate committees, and political committees.”

School busing, one of the most hated tools of social engineering, may be making a comeback in Connecticut, pursuant to legislation introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. Beginning in 2021 under Senate Bill 454 (“Looney’s Bill”), many children may be riding buses for long distances, killing a cherished American institution – the neighborhood school.

Looney’s Bill would create a commission to merge school districts of towns with populations of less than 40,000 into new or existing regional districts. Only 24 of the state’s 169 towns have populations above this benchmark. The bill provides an exception for regional districts that operate “in a manner similar to the (54) probate (court) districts.” Either way, Looney’s Bill would trigger massive consolidation, all under the guise of “creating a more efficient educational system,” the stated purpose of the bill.

Looney’s Bill is but one page long. It is barely a bill. It hasn’t been through any committees, public hearings or debate in the legislature, so why even pay attention to it?

Because of its authorship. Looney is a veteran Senate leader. Veteran legislative leaders do not introduce bills unlikely to pass. Moreover, Democrats hold supermajorities of 60 percent plus in both chambers of the legislature. So, some version of forced school consolidation is virtually certain to pass.

Outgoing Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has been busy in his waning days. As ever, he has been polishing his record and boasting of his accomplishments — on an epic scale. His “Malloy-Wyman Record” is a massive 283-page document, providing a distorted and inaccurate account, certainly concerning the enormous expenditures devoted to the care and feeding of the state workforce.