Democrats’ urban agenda failing cities
Echoing President Joe Biden’s recent address to the nation on COVID, Gov. Ned Lamont recently used the term “underserved” to describe his urban constituents. “Reaching our underserved communities remains a priority of my administration,” the governor claimed, “and we will do everything we can to get as many vaccines administered as we can in the coming weeks.”
“Underserved” is an odd choice of words for Gov. Lamont and fellow Democrat leaders to use when describing urban residents, as by doing so they are publicly accusing themselves of failure.
After all, Democrats have controlled Connecticut’s legislature and major cities for decades. If urban communities remain underserved after all these years, Democrat leaders have only themselves to blame.
At a grassroots event organized to facilitate vaccinations in Fair Haven last weekend, Kica Matos, vice president of Initiatives at the Vera Institute of Justice and a former deputy mayor of New Haven, called out state leaders by saying, “Just yesterday, Governor Lamont admitted that the state has failed Black and brown communities miserably when it comes to COVID vaccinations. But we have a plan to fix it, and that is why we are here today.”
Hoping to prioritize those with underlying health conditions and firstresponders, Matos contacted the governor and state health department to request a waiver so that all Fair Haven residents could make vaccination appointments, not just those in the currently eligible age bracket. She was denied.
Matos went on to say that she had invited the Lamont administration to take part in Saturday’s community event so they could learn from the organizing effort and replicate it in other communities. The answer from the governor’s office once again was a firm, “No.”
If Governor Lamont and his administration are truly concerned about helping these communities, perhaps they should find some time to listen to them. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker all participated in the event, though their motives raised some eyebrows when later walking through the neighborhood Senator Blumenthal was heard commenting “We should be registering them to vote.”
Admittedly, lip service and self-interested politicians are not exactly headline news in Connecticut. Broken promises, however, are a more serious offense. And when it comes to pledges from Democrat leaders to improve our cities, the list of broken promises is long.
Remember when Governor Lamont campaigned on the promise of a $375 million property tax cut? That plan was abandoned once he took office. Or, how about the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales tax revenues that state leaders have been promising to share with cities since 2015? Postponed again with this year’s budget, this time indefinitely. What about the PILOT grants our cities depend on to offset their losses from non-taxable property? That program has been underfunded since its inception in 1969.
A study released by Wallet-Hub shows that Connecticut residents have the second highest tax burden in the entire nation. With a proposed $50 million tax on healthcare insurance premiums, a $90 million mileage tax on trucks, and a 17 cents per gallon gas tax it looks like Democrats are trying their best to get to number one.
But the deceptions don’t end there.
After receiving less than 30 percent of what the state promised them in PILOT grants last year, 28 leaders from across the state penned a joint letter to the governor this January, asking him to boost funding for the program and prioritize assistance for municipalities in the worst shape.
With the pressure on, Governor Lamont allocated an additional $100 million to distressed municipalities in his budget proposal. The sleight of hand, however, was that the funding will come from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund — a $1.9 trillion package to bail out mismanaged blue states across the country under the guise of a pandemic response. But the program is a one-time giveaway. What will happen to city finances once the gift goes away?
The Lamont budget does the same thing to education. The headline reads that school districts will see a 10.5 percent increase in funding over the next two years — but it will also be paid for with one-time federal money and therefore be temporary.
And finally, the latest in a long line of whoppers, Governor Lamont is promising municipalities 50 percent of future tax revenue from soon-to-be-legalized marijuana. Perhaps he should deliver some of the sales tax money cities have been waiting for since 2015 before making new pledges.
The truth is, Democrats will have to keep breaking promises, raising taxes and leaning on every penny of relief they can get from their pals in Washington if they’re to have any hope of camouflaging the financial disaster that is heading Connecticut’s way.
Instead, we should recognize this bailout for what it is — a one-time stimulus that could help us fundamentally restructure Connecticut if used properly. But that would require some tough decisions like reducing discretionary spending, restructuring the state pension plan to protect the retirement security of our employees and rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse in places like Connecticut’s Port Authority.
Democrat leaders have been failing our cities for years — but they remain ever confident in urban residents’ loyalty. Public service should be about others, not the self. And in the middle of a pandemic their focus should be on vaccinations rather than votes.