Don Pesci: Where Democrats are the status quo party

Quite suddenly, the enabler for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) in Connecticut’s General Assembly, Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, has contracted a wicked case of ants in his pants.

The state legislature closed for official business on June 7, nearly two months ago. But Aresimowicz, the gatekeeper in the House without whose approval no bill may reach the floor of the General Assembly, dawdled delinquently and brought no budget to the floor. In truth, the Democratic leader in the House had no budget bill in hand to present to the legislature – none. Aresimowicz was waiting for state employee rank and file union members to vote on a closed door deal being shaped by Gov. Dannel Malloy and union chiefs.

The fiscal year ended on June 30. Democrat legislators still had not produced a budget. In the meantime, Republicans – who had fashioned a budget that had been vetted and pronounced balanced by the State Budget Office – were unable to get their budget bill  to the floor so that it might be discussed and voted upon. Unlike Democrats, Republicans were budgeting for the Connecticut’s imperiled future, Republican leader in the Senate Len Fasano later would say.

The obstacles were Aresimowicz, presently employed by a union, Malloy, who in the past has marched with union protesters on strike-lines, progressive legislators in the General Assembly agitating for increased taxes on remaining wealthy taxpayers in the state who had not yet bolted for less predatory states, those in Connecticut’s media who prefer the current ruinous status quo,  and confused and unorganized taxpayers, soon to be plundered again by the progressive legislative proponents ofthe largest and second largest tax increases in state history.

The Democratic Party “resistance” was waiting, as usual, upon unions to make “concessions.” The SEBAC-Malloy-Aresimowicz fait accompli would not come out of the closed to the public closet until July 18.

So – wait for the concessions.

The SEBAC-Malloy-Aresimowicz-progressive Democrat deal resembled to a “T” past SEBAC-Malloy- Aresimowicz-progressive Democrat deals. So pro-union was the deal that it passed a vote by rank and file union workers in the blink of an eye. The deal guarantees annual raises of three percent per year; it includes a no-layoff provision; and – most importantly – pushes out the termination of the agreed upon contracts until 2027, by which time Malloy, Aresimowicz and not a few retired union leaders may have shaken the dust of Connecticut from their feet and become residents of Florida. Former Gov. Jodi Rell, once thought to be a firewall that preventing union arsonists from burning down the house, is now a citizen of Florida.

This is the status quo in Connecticut: tax increases, spending increases, business flight and reduced revenues – which, of course, necessitate higher taxes, more spending, more business flight and diminished revenues.  At this remove, no one any longer remembers former Gov. Lowell Weicker’s prophetic campaign prediction: “Raising taxes in the middle of a recession would be like pouring gas on a fire.” The recession that greeted Weicker when he became governor – and instituted an income tax – lasted more than a decade. The current recession that wafted Malloy into office officially ended in June, 2009 – but not in Connecticut, where the tax-increase fire still burns in the basement.

While Democrats in the General Assembly have yet to produce a budget, they are now using the state crisis they have caused to force Republicans who do not support the state deadly status quo to lend their shoulders to push forward a union deal that will secure so-called union “concession” to 2017 – thus preventing future governors and future legislators from successfully attacking the real causes of Connecticut’s discontent.

The Democrat Party is now the last refuge of scoundrels who wish to maintain the status quo. The Republican Party has become the reform party.

Suppose, critics of the proposed contracts ask, there is another recession. Given the present SEBAC-Malloy-Aresimowicz fait accompli, what can a future governor or a future legislature do to mitigate the ruinous consequences of a third recession? Answer: nothing. Bound by inflexible, court enforceable contracts, future governors and legislators will not be able to reduce unionized benefits, modify salary increases or curtail contractual layoff protections until the ironclad contracts elapse in 2017. A Republican reform – so far resisted by union employed Aresimowicz, pro-union governor Malloy, and progressives in Connecticut’s status quo General Assembly – would allow the legislature to escape the contract trap by changing from contract to statute the means government may use to snatch democracy from the jaws of SEBAC.

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist.

Chris Powell: In sea of red ink, Conn. keeps sending out discretionary grants

Despite imposing during the last six years Connecticut's two largest tax increases, state government is running its third straight big annual deficit, causing Gov. Dannel Malloy last week to spend the emergency reserve and to suspend some financial aid to municipalities.

The numbers are a judgment of failure and wrongheadedness against the administration. Yet every week the press releases still fly out of the governor's office, announcing millions in discretionary grants being sent hither and yon, seeming to proclaim obliviousness. Still, the governor deserves a little sympathy, for he alone is dealing with the problem somewhat. The municipalities just whine about it, though the governor's reduction in their aid is an invitation to them to obtain concessions from their employee unions just as the governor is seeking concessions from the state employee unions.

Having left empty the fabled "suggestion box" of a few years ago that was supposed to be filled with proposals for greater efficiency in state government, state employee union leaders speak only of raising income taxes on the rich, as if tax rates should be set not by a careful calculation of fairness and effectiveness but by whatever is necessary for the unions' contentment, as if they have first claim to everyone else's income.

While he complained this week about leaks in the roof of Gampel Pavilion, University of Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma was no help either. At a rally of real estate agents at the state Capitol, Auriemma admitted, "I don't have any answers. I'm not running for anything, nor do I want to." He, too, just wants money. Auriemma also told the agents: "I‘m in the recruiting business. You're in the recruiting business. When people have a choice, you better give them a reason to pick you."

But through its budgeting state government already engages in a lot of recruiting: for government employees, welfare recipients, and, having made itself a "sanctuary state" for illegal aliens. Meanwhile, Republican legislators just cautiously pick around the edges of the budget for small savings in the future that won't alienate anyone in the present. Asked last week why state government shouldn't reduce teacher pension benefits, since the governor is trying to push teacher pension costs onto municipalities, Senate Republican leader Len Fasano defaulted.

Instead Fasano expounded on what he called his "tenderness" for teachers, whose unions, far from being tender themselves, are actually the state's most fearsome special interest, constituting the largest politically active group in every town. With an excess of "tenderness" for the teacher unions, the Senate last week voted unanimously to repeal a law that would end social promotion in schools, a law establishing competence examinations for graduation from high school.

Trying a little "tenderness" itself last month, the State Board of Education canceled a plan to incorporate student test scores in teacher evaluations. While state Comptroller Kevin Lembo, a Democrat who recently became a candidate for governor, is supposed to be a righteous numbers guy, this week he issued a statement denouncing President Trump's removal of FBI Director James Comey. "We must speak out, we must stay engaged, we must stay active, and we must fight back," Lembo said, though Connecticut already has seven members of Congress, all Democrats, making a very good political living on Trump issues, which involve the federal government, not state government.

If Connecticut's numbers guy has any idea of what to do about the state's catastrophic budget numbers, he hasn't yet shared them, though of course he, too, well might prefer to run against Trump.

 Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.