Competing ideas on taxes, policing
The two candidates running to represent the 36th Senate District have differing ideas and proposals about economic growth, taxes and policing.
State Sen. Alex Kasser, a Democrat, won the seat in the traditionally Republican district two years ago. Her Republican challenger this year, Ryan Fazio, a newcomer to the state political stage, is blasting her vote to approve the police reform bill that was passed in Hartford in July.
The 36th Senate District covers Greenwich and parts of Norther Stamford and New Canaan.
During the campaign, Kasser has pointed to her legislative accomplishments in the area of infrastructure spending and student debt. The student loan bill was signed into law. The infrastructure measure has passed in the state Senate, but not advanced to the House of Representatives. Kasser designed legislation for the creation of an infrastructure bank, which she called an “innovative way of financing transportation projects.” It would allow
public-private partnerships for transportation improvements, a measure used in numerous other states.
“It would allow private funders to invest in transportation projects — they would not own the project. ... It’s not privatization,” said Kasser, a Greenwich resident. “There are billions of dollars of private capital that want to invest in secure, long-term investments.”
The one-term state senator said she was also pleased to have developed the law aimed at lowering student loan debts. It gives tax credits to companies that help college graduates from Connecticut in their workforce pay down their student debts, “lowering the student loan burden” that can be a “real obstacle” for young people seeking to maximize their potential, she said.
Kasser also wants to expand a public-healthcare option — allowing the state healthcare plan to take in small businesses.
The senator worked previously as a corporate lawyer, and she earned her law degree at the University of Chicago. She studied at Wesleyan as an undergraduate and pursued graduate studies at Yale in environmental law.
Also a Greenwich resident, her opponent Fazio worked in the renewable energy field before running for public office. He said his goals as a lawmaker are to “reduce taxes and grow the economy.” Fazio, who studied economics at Northwestern University, is looking to cut the state income tax rate and to eliminate certain deductions and tax credits to make up the lost revenue.
He said reforming the tax structure os a priority: “That would create more simplification, and it would reward work and job creation and I think it would raise income for middle class families,” said Fazio, who serves on the Representative Town Meeting.
The Republican challenger said he wants to curtail what he called burdensome unfunded mandates on schools, giving more control to local school boards and principals. “They have to spend hours upon hours on paperwork and other regulatory compliance that comes from Hartford,” he said. “We don’t even know how many unfunded mandates there are, from the state government on local school districts, as far as I know they don’t exist in one place.”
But a sharp point of disagreement between the candidates centers on the recent police reform law. The new legislation created a number of new initiatives, such as impaneling an inspector general to investigate cases involving excess police force, limiting circumstances in which deadly use of force can be justified and requiring officers to report excessive use of force by their colleagues. Among the more controversial sections is one limiting government immunity protections and allowing lawsuits against officers if “malicious, wanton or willful” behavior is involved.
“This bill created a baseline legal standard,” said Kasser, who voted for the law, adding that it closed gaps in the law to make bad behavior accountable. “It sets standards and requires the best training and technology for all police departments, so they can deescalate situations and prevent violence,” she said.
But Fazio said he would work to scrap the law. “It takes away proactive policing measures, that are valuable, like consent searches,” he said, and officers are now prohibited from asking motorists if they can search a vehicle with the driver’s consent.
“It imposes too much liability on our local police,” Fazio continued. The candidate was also critical of the process behind the law’s passage, saying it was conducted “without a lot of public consideration or debate” in what he called a hurried manner.