Tax Returns Due From Lamont, Stefanowski
Taxes and jobs are in the news in unexpected ways as November’s election draws nearer. First, taxes. The two major party candidates for governor, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski, have not released their personal tax returns and appear reluctant to do so. This is a troubling development in a worrisome year.
Tax returns can be a source of embarrassment for candidates. Summaries of the state and federal documents have caused controversy. In 2014, Republican Tom Foley, running against Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy for the second time, released summaries of three years of returns that revealed the wealthy Greenwich businessman had paid a piddling $673 in federal taxes in 2013.
You may recall that this provided fuel for Malloy to harangue Foley and win another painful term as governor. Foley, after all, enjoyed a large enough fortune to spend more than $10 million of it on his 2010 campaign. For those of us who are not moguls, it is hard to reconcile how someone with hundreds of millions of dollars pays far less in taxes than we do.
Connecticut’s government has tentacles in almost every aspect of life in the state. It’s important to know if the person who leads it has interests that may conflict with his authority. It’s also helpful to know if candidates who talk about sacrifice for us are in a position to endure some themselves.
This year is looking different. Stefanowski appears reluctant to release financial information. The former pawn shop and payday lender has muttered something about providing summaries but no details have been forthcoming. Anyone who has listened to Stefanowski knows that details are not his strength. He’s running his campaign from cloud cuckoo land where airy declarations untethered to truth or facts fill the air.
Lamont, who is very rich by any measure, is also holding back because he does not want to provide eye-popping numbers of his own while Stefanowski reveals nothing. Nevertheless, Lamont gave the press a look at his income tax returns during his 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate and they did little more than confirm what we already knew: He and Mrs. Lamont, a successful venture capitalist, have enjoyed great success in the nation’s free markets.
Even without the candidates’ income taxes, we do know there are some significant differences in how they spend their money. Both Lamont and Stefanowski financed their successful primary campaigns. Lamont gave money to his campaign, Stefanowski lent money to his.
That’s a big difference. Lamont will not be able to seek to have donors to his campaign pay him back for the money he has contributed. If Stefanowski wins in November, an unseemly and dangerous scramble to raise money could follow. Stefanowski and all sorts of interests hoping to win favor with him could engage in a furious cycle of fundraising for money that would go into Stefanowski’s pockets.
We have no idea what shape Stefanowski’s finances are in after he loaned more than $2 million to his campaign for governor. I’m just going to guess that a guy who ran a company that charged more than 2,000 percent for some loans may seize an opportunity to get some or all of his money back with some frenzied, high-pressure fundraising. This would be a dangerous extension to a bewildering campaign.
Voters are not the only ones looking to the future with trepidation. Malloy administration officials are looking for places to land as their eight years of failure near a conclusion. The private sector, where the Lamonts have thrived, is not proving a welcoming place for high-ranking Malloy officials. The governor’s legal counsel, Karen Buffkin, snagged a new and lucrative position in labor relations at the University of Connecticut, which is already groaning under the burden of supporting a bloated
administrative bureaucracy.
It may get worse. The Connecticut Mirror reports that Malloy budget director Benjamin Barnes may not be done making a mess of state government. He’s a finalist for the top financial job at the community college and regional university system. He needs two more years as a state employee to qualify for a pension. Barnes has been a failure in managing the state’s finances and will leave office with the next governor facing a $4.6 billion budget deficit. Academia ought not become a hive of hacks from a discredited administration. Students, faculty and the public deserve a new start as they confront the mess Malloy leaves behind.
Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. He can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com.