Debunking Fazio’s claims
Ryan Fazio is banking that a litany of lies will win him election. Take energy. Earlier this year, he put “more nuclear” at the very top of his energy policy. In the debate with Sen. Alex Kasser, Fazio backtracked, claiming he didn’t mean that he wants to build nuclear reactors in Connecticut. Instead, he wants to “import more nuclear power from the region and from eastern Connecticut ...” But how could a guy who claims to have worked in the energy sector not know that nuclear power capacity is declining in our region, with the Indian Point nuclear power plant near us closing completely next year? How could he possibly not know that “eastern Connecticut” is part of Connecticut, and part of the state grid, and that you cannot “import” power that’s already here?
Fazio also claimed that nuclear power was “low cost.” In fact, Millstone’s nuclear power is not only expensive, it receives massive subsidies from Connecticut ratepayers to remain in business. Back in 2017, when the Republicans seized operational control of the General Assembly, the GOP demanded that the legislature pass a bill providing Millstone’s corporate owner, Dominion Energy, with annual subsidies of $300 million as their price for approving a budget.
When Fazio put “more nuclear” at the top of his energy agenda, he knew full well that the only way to achieve the goal was by building nuclear reactors on the Connecticut shoreline. If elected, that’s just what he’ll try to do.
Consider Fazio’s falsehoods regarding state government. In a column last year in New York Post, Fazio claimed Gov. Ned Lamont raised taxes on “Connecticut residents by about $1.7 billion over two years, mostly in the form of various new sales taxes. It was the fourth biennial budget of the last six with significant tax increase ...”
Let’s dissect those falsehoods. First, state spending by Democratic governors Malloy and Lamont over the past decade has increased at an annualized rate of just 1.2 percent. Indeed, not only has spending increased at one of the lowest rates of any state in the nation, but according to Pew Research, Connecticut’s state spending has fallen when adjusted for inflation.
And that “$1.7 billion tax increase over two years”? False. According to Hearst Connecticut
Media, over a billion dollars of that so-called “tax increase,” nearly two-thirds, came from the renewal of the hospital tax, a complex arrangement in which the state imposes a tax, but receives revenues from the federal government, which it shares with the hospitals. Technically, the agreement expired at the end of the previous fiscal year. But it’s actually just a continuation. Fazio treats it as an increase. The entire increase, according to Hearst, boils down to just $300 million, barely the rate of inflation.
Fazio claims that Democratic governors “have raised taxes to fund an increasingly bloated government.” False. Democratic governors Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont cut the state’s workforce by nearly 14 percent, reducing staffing to the level last seen in the mid-1970s. Indeed, Connecticut’s total government workforce at all levels of government relative to population is the 10th leanest of any state in the nation. Far from “raising taxes to fund bloat,” actuarial firm Cavanaugh McDonald confirm that the various labor agreements concluded under Governor Malloy are on target to save taxpayers more than $24 billion during the next two decades. Further, Governor Lamont is planning for major retirements by state employees next year ahead of the implementation of large cuts in pension benefits in 2022. That will create opportunities for further streamlining of our already lean-staffed state government.
Fazio claims in his recent op-ed that “Democrats have controlled (state government) completely for 12 years.” He’s trying to make voters forget that, fueled by millions in dark money, the GOP took effective control of the General Assembly in 2017 and 2018. And what did they did do to Connecticut when they got their chance? Ignoring teachers’ rights to collective bargaining, the GOP passed a $95 million “Teacher Tax” that slammed every teacher in Connecticut with an average $1,500 increase in their contributions to the teacher pension fund, while cutting the state’s contributions by the same amount. That major tax on teachers didn’t improve their meager pension benefits one penny. Keep that attack on teachers’ collective bargaining rights in mind, because Fazio supported Greenwich’s Republican-controlled finance board’s
Far from “raising taxes to fund bloat,” actuarial firm Cavanaugh McDonald confirm that the various labor agreements concluded under Governor Malloy are on target to save taxpayers more than $24 billion during the next two decades
$3.1 million cut in the schools budget, a unilateral action clearly meant to force teachers to agree to pay and benefits cuts in order to avoid firings. He also voted twice in the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting against a resolution demanding that the finance board rescind cuts to schools. So attacking teachers and public education is exactly what the GOP did when it got the chance, and what Fazio supported in Greenwich.
Fazio believes he can pile up so many falsehoods that no one will be able to debunk them all before voters make up their minds. Voters should instead consider that litany of lies, and just say no. Sean Goldrick served for four years as a Democratic member of the Board of Estimate and Taxation. He lives in Riverside.