The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Lamont’s lesson in Conn. politics
Gov. Ned Lamont is worth every penny you’re paying him to answer the need for adult daycare called the Connecticut General Assembly.
Oh right, the independently wealthy governor has declined a paycheck. So, let me repeat myself ...
At least he’s learned something the hard way: Just because an idea is the right thing to do, doesn’t mean you can get it done in the legislature.
Yep, applying privatesector strategies to state government isn’t pretty, especially when a new governor — even with the moral high ground of being half-right on tolls — is learning the ropes the hard way.
How’s that “radical transparency” doing?
You know, that’s the peer rating system for which Lamont’s buddy Ray Dalio based his billions, and by extension, Ryan Drajewicz, the governor’s chief of staff who worked for Dalio creating nothing actually tangible but vast wealth for nine years at the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund in Westport.
Well, House and Senate Democrats seized on the transparency part, radically taking down Lamont and the outsiders he has surrounded himself and barricaded in that second-floor office suite in the State Capital.
It’s as if the incredible shrinking-then-vanishing toll legislation were hard data on a glowing laptop screen. One of the many mistakes the Lamont team made was to assume that sensible legislation should be embraced by the General Assembly.
Just because numbers make sense, doesn’t mean the motivations of the House and Senate are quantifiable in any way besides anticipating the next election.
In boxing parlance, Lamont was rope-a-doped by Democrats who for the last year didn’t exactly mislead Lamont about their support of tolls. It was a case of passive resistance as week after calendar week went by.
When push came to shove the other day, they feigned near-disappointment, hiding their relief that the governor and his corporate insiders, who were thoroughly outmatched during the first year of Lamont’s term, surrendered.
However, Lamont publicly showing how miffed he is serves as a sign of personal growth.
“We’ve had a number of different options on the table to fix this in a credible way that takes care of our future,” Lamont groused to reporters. “Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, especially in the Senate, are willing to make a choice right now. If these guys aren’t willing to step up and vote, I’m going to solve this problem. You’re elected to make some choices.”
Well, the General Assembly makes dodging choices a political sport.
Senate President Pro
Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, chuckled when he admitted that just before the truck-tolling bill died, he offered to flip a coin with House leaders to see which legislative chamber would first take up the hot potato.
Ultimately and comically, in a case of mutually assured destruction, the House and Senate would debate on legislation containing six tolls each, so both would have equal culpability in the legislative game of chicken.
Looney insisted that the Senate could approve tolls if “one more week” were given for planning.
“We have 18 votes, which we shared with the governor and the House,” Looney said. “We assumed the House wanted to go first because it was the House proposal that became the basis for the final compromise. They were, for whatever reason, not wanting to go first, so we said ‘Let’s just flip a coin to see who would go first,’ and they declined that option.”
The beneficiaries of this Democratic meltdown (for the uninitiated, Lamont, as rich as he is and as protective of fellow millionaires as he has been, the governor is also a Democrat), of course are the minority Republicans doing business with the small but ubiquitous anti-toll faction of the public.
Being anti-toll is an easy way to pander to voters. But scratch the surface slightly and the issue was really “trust,” a euphemism for the conservative mantra of cutting spending. Forget that a federal court called truck-only tolling in Rhode Island a user fee and not a tax.
Forget that Connecticut is the only state on the eastern seaboard without tolls.
The estimated $170 million in revenue from a dozen truck tolls on highway bridges was basically a drop in the bucket, when Lamont’s 10-year, $19-billion transportation infrastructure program really needed $800 million a year from both truck and car tolls, especially out-of-state drivers who freeload on us.
So now Lamont is going to bond $200 million a year for transportation infrastructure, as he has been forced into. It will be interesting to see how he can illustrate how much more taxpayers will cough up to pay for it.
On Friday the governor’s budget office produced the capital-spending package that has been hanging fire since last spring, when Lamont finally theorized he could hold municipal aid hostage in exchange for a commitment on transportation.
That’s living and learning in the public sector.