2016 job loss should earn Malloy, insiders a pink slip

While Connecticut’s neighboring states all experienced varying degrees of job growth in 2016, a testament to a national economy regaining its mojo, our state ended the year with 200 fewer jobs than the year before, according to a new report from the Dept. of Labor.

There can be no clearer measure of the terrible damage wrought by insiders in Hartford on struggling Connecticut families than this backwards slide on job creation.

Much like how this governor uses sleights of hand and gimmicks to paper over the perpetual budget crisis he’s created in Connecticut, he has used misleading rhetoric to pretend our state is on the path to prosperity — when in reality it is slipping further underwater.

Malloy has repeatedly pretended small breaks from Connecticut’s self-inflicted economic collapse are evidence of a new recovery — evidence the state has finally come out of the proverbial woods.

“We’re actually creating jobs on a per-capita basis faster than any other state in New England,” Malloy said to the Connecticut Post in September of 2014.

“We are making steady progress in improving our state’s economy,” Malloy said in an October 2014 statement.

We’re reaching out across the globe and we’re bringing jobs to Connecticut,” Malloy said in January 2016, according to WNPR.

In his 2017 State of the State address delivered just weeks ago on Jan 4 in Hartford, the governor again suggested Connecticut was experiencing sustained job-growth.

“I ask that you look no further than the progress we’ve made in recent years to see exactly what is possible when Connecticut works together,” he said, “Years of good economic development are helping to grow jobs.”

I think the governor is right, we should look no further than at the progress he has drastically failed to achieve. A net loss of jobs in 2016 is beyond unacceptable, it should be a rallying cry for a new generation of leadership in Connecticut.

Certainly, the same old insiders under the Gold Dome in Hartford have not received the message.

At the start of his seventh year in office Malloy and Democratic leaders have again proposed bailing out Hartford’s irresponsibility with a crippling tax hike on hardworking families and businesses — eliminating the property tax credit and savagely slashing municipal aid with inescapable impact on local property taxes.

It is unconscionable that after a year in which the state actually lost more jobs than it created, the governor wants another round of tax increases directed right at middle-class and working people.

Our state needs bold leaders who are unafraid to make the hard calls to dramatically change the flawed trajectory of these failed policies. Leaders who understand we cannot tax our way out of an economic death spiral. Leaders who have balanced budgets, reformed pension systems and stabilized bad situations — without decimating education or services.

Most importantly we need new leaders who will put hardworking Connecticut families and small businesses above the well-connected special interests and Hartford elite who have come first for far too long in Hartford.

Despite what Malloy has said each year of his dismal tenure, despite what he will say in the months ahead and despite what his Hartford insider allies will say come election time — the only way Connecticut will stop the bleeding and achieve real growth is to fire this governor and those who have supported his job-crushing policies next fall.