Commentary––

Does Connecticut

Really Need A State Budget?

By Chris Powell

Frustration and bad temper now rule the state Capitol. It’s funny, and it’s progress.

The other day Governor Rowland sent state troopers stomping around to hand legislators his formal summons to reconvene to enact a state budget, and the legislators dutifully assembled only to adjourn because he won’t sign into law as much in tax increases as they have been insisting on.

Leaders of the Republican minority in the legislature accused the Democratic majority of being tax happy, and leaders of the Democratic legislative majority accused the Republicans of intransigence. They were both right.

“You’re never going to have a budget deal,” House Speaker Moira K. Lyons said, “if you’re not being flexible.”

But why should those who are not completely dependent on the government’s going on exactly as always want a budget deal? Indeed, just where is the “crisis” in the “state budget crisis” of hyperbolic newspaper stories and television news graphics?

After all, money is still coming into the state treasury, and if it is not quite enough to continue operations exactly as before and if the legislature and governor cannot agree on a spending plan, Rowland can be left with the discretion to decide which operations get suspended. How interesting if Connecticut should ever have to contemplate distinguishing “essential” state services from “inessential” services.

So what if those Republican legislators are “inflexible,” refusing to vote to raise taxes? As pitiful a minority as they usually are, the Republican legislators now hold the trump card, the guarantee of the governor’s veto. The Democrats cannot raise taxes without them. And who, besides Democrats, needs Republicans who vote to raise taxes?

In marshalling the state police for that dramatic if meaningless show, the governor got to taint the Democrats as obstructionist before they did the same to him by sending him another tax-heavy budget to veto. Blindsided, the Democrats retreated to their chant of taxing the rich more.

“It’s only fair,” Senate President Kevin B. Sullivan said, “that the Fortunate 500” –– that is, people with incomes of $500,000 or more –– “make an appropriate contribution to resolving the crisis.”

But hadn’t those people already been paying taxes, and substantially so? Why were there no complaints about the supposed inadequacy of tax rates for the rich before the Democrats decided that a three percent increase in spending –– the increase endorsed by the governor –– would not be enough?

If, as the Republicans say, one percent of Connecticut’s population is already paying more in income taxes than 86 percent, where does reasonable progressivity in taxation end and political exploitation and even persecution begin? (The surprisingly strong support for raising taxes as reported by a recent University of Connecticut poll may be explained by the assumption of most respondents that they would not be the ones to pay.) Is the fairness of tax rates really determined by the spending hunger of the moment, especially when state government has never tried much to economize?

It is said that the Democratic leaders had just grudgingly conceded to means-testing eligibility for state government’s subsidy of prescription drugs for the elderly, the ConnPACE program. But means-testing ConnPACE would be small sacrifice. After all, if, as the Democrats say, state government is morally compelled to claim more of the incomes of the rich, why should it subsidize their prescriptions?

Except for some university professors, no substantial concessions have been obtained from the state employee unions. There has been no reconsideration of collective bargaining and binding arbitration for state and municipal employee unions, policies that severely impede control of as much as half of Connecticut’s public spending.

Nothing has been done about state government’s failure to obtain competitive bids for nursing home care for the indigent, wherein eight percent of the budget is spent on only one half percent of the state’s population. There has been no debate about the huge cost of Connecticut’s prison system and the policy failure behind it, drug prohibition. No one in authority has asked how many fatherless 17-year-olds Connecticut can afford to imprison merely for selling marijuana, never mind how many the state should imprison.

Despite several scandals the legislature has declined to review the patronage that passes for “economic development” and, increasingly, for “public works.”

And the governor quickly withdrew his suggestion that the definition of “essential public services” might not include the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, even as the “Permanent” in the commission’s name practically broadcasts the fear that Connecticut could learn to live with one less agency of political propaganda.

The governor is having fun threatening the Democrats with suspension of state financial aid to municipalities if they don’t give him the sort of budget he wants and instead leave him with arbitrary authority over spending. But then nearly every municipality, like nearly every agency of state government, is still paying its employees raises at a time of supposed budget “crisis.” For those who aren’t part of the government class, watching it squirm is fun.

Yes, after nine years of running state government Rowland has proved as indifferent to its efficacy as the Democrats always have been. But when nobody in government cares whether it works, when the only concern is to feed the machine, the hated rich may be the middle class’ last line of defense, and the most humane thing to do with government may be to starve it back to its senses.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)