Why big economic reforms fail in Connecticut

When a teen tragically dies in a skateboard accident, the General Assembly tightens the helmet laws. When group home workers call a strike, lawmakers come through with raises as replacements show up for training. When 140,000 retirees lose Medicare premiums subsidies, Democrats and Republicans unite to find the money.

And when vandals paint swastikas on Jewish cemetery headstones, the Legislature adds Holocaust classes to the state’s mandatory curriculum.

The pattern is clear. “Legislatures since at least 1787 are reactive bodies,” said Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, a 29-year state House veteran. “It’s what parliaments and legislatures do. We react.”

Unfortunately, Connecticut desperately needs more than small-ball reaction like the examples above —all of which passed in the last few days. We’re screaming out for broad economic reforms, changes in the way government prods the economy. In a big way.

As the General Assembly closes out another year of work, we can look back on lots of broad economic reforms aired in debates, reports and public hearings. All of them failed.

Some were big, such as the sweeping tax changes recommended by a commission on economic growth, or a series of bills aimed at updating gambling policy or a cohesive plan to finance transportation upgrades for the next 30 years.

Some were very targeted: legalizing marijuana, allowing Tesla to sell cars without franchised dealerships, allowing Tweed New Haven airport to expand its runway, restructuring the underfunded teachers’ pension fund and enacting paid family medical leave in order to attract more young professionals.

All of those could boost the Connecticut economy, not by doing the same old things but by acting differently. All of them required a leap of faith. All faced opponents with plenty to lose.

And in the end, most didn’t so much as come up for a vote in either chamber.

That’s not good enough for a state that was No. 49 in overall economic growth in 2017, a state that has shrunk by 7 percent since the Great Recession in total economic size as the U.S. has grown by 11 percent.

A dollar short

As of late Wednesday it appeared we would have a budget deal that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is likely to sign. The pact will deliver some forward-thinking measures, such as restoring Medicaid to parents who earn less than about $21,000 and have children at home.

And it will leave the state with about $1 billion in the bank.

But an adopted budget doesn’t make for a successful economic plan in a state that desperately needs one. Just look at the projected shortfalls the next governor will face: $2 billion in 2020 and rising from there.

Why the failure, year after year?

The perpetual fiscal crisis makes forward thinking almost impossible. It takes money to make money and we ain’t got it. Electronic highway tolls, marijuana, paid family leave and other ideas all met opposition in part because they required large upfront investments though, to be sure, opponents had broader concerns.

Heck, we can’t even afford to study our options. When a key legislative committee asked the state Department of Economic and Community Development to study five big ideas, Commissioner Catherine Smith said, and I paraphrase, “No can do, sorry. You’ve cut our staffing by 20 percent.”

Another clear cause, as my colleague Emilie Munson described Sunday, is the close division between parties. Republicans and Democrats are tied 18-18 in the Senate. One holdout can kill any teetering bill. And Democrats hold a slim majority of 79-71 in the House (with one seat unfilled).

Baked in the culture

It’s much deeper than money and political gridlock. The core of Connecticut culture holds us back. Look at what we do in this state: Insurance, defense manufacturing and finance. Protect your butt, protect your house, protect your nation, protect your assets. We are risk-averse — the land of steady habits — at a time when the states getting ahead are taking chances.

Take marijuana, for example. Legal sales would add at least $50 million a year to state coffers, maybe more. I get that lots of people don’t think we should be in the business of sanctioning unhealthy drugs. But Massachusetts pot goes on sale this summer and anyone can drive an hour or less to buy a six-month supply. It’s here, folks. Take the money or leave it.

The whole way government operates seems to prevent real economic reforms. “I don’t think it was this way before TV came in,” said Rep. Livvy Floren, RGreenwich, who’s been in the General Assembly for 18 years.

To her point, time-consuming grandstanding has replaced quiet, barroom compromise. Famously, lawmakers of both parties were known to head for the local restaurants a generation ago, together.

They may get along fine. Rep. Steven Stafstrom, D-Bridgeport, and Rep. Chris Davis, R-Ellington, hugged on the way out of the House Chamber at midnight last Thursday after they led their respective sides in a bitter debate over casino expansion. “It’s nothing personal,” they told each other, as they shared a bond of youth.

But that’s not the same as Democrats and Republicans working together from the political center, over drinks and dinners.

Left and right

Liberals such as David Pickus, president of the SEIU District 1199 health care workers union, decry what he called “the takeover by the right-wing of the Republican Party.” Conservatives recall when the liberal wing in the House was much smaller than it is today.

Naturally, one person’s meaningful reform is another person’s disastrous policy. Big change shouldn’t be simple or easy. And in Connecticut, where half say the answer is higher public investment and half says it’s lower taxes, it definitely isn’t.

Then there’s Malloy. Economic reforms in the past — notably the income tax under former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. — have come from governors in the thick of the legislative battles.

Malloy has cut the size of government dramatically, much to unions’ chagrin, and restructured the state employee benefits plans. History will be a lot kinder to him than his abysmal poll numbers. But he’s the first governor in decades who never served in the legislature, and he’s not adept at building consensus, with the glowing exception of his bipartisan gun-control legislation four months after the Sandy Hook massacre.

“He tries to be directive and we think we’re in charge, so it’s a problem,” said Floren, who added that Malloy has bold ideas and worked well with her when he was mayor of Stamford, a slice of which she represents.

Follow the voters

So where do we go from here? We can push for structural changes, such as keeping omnibus bills alive when a session ends. That way, lawmakers wouldn’t have to start over every year.

We can hope to elect a consensus-builder as the next governor. Both parties have at least one with a chance to win.

We can agree to compromise for the greater good. Imagine if business had consented to a small payroll tax and a higher minimum wage, and labor had agreed to some binding arbitration rules changes in municipal contracts and to stop fighting to keep the estate tax. Wow.

We can fight our cautious nature and think hard about new ways of doing things. For example, Joe McGee, vice president of policy for the Business Council of Fairfield County, is convening private companies and investors to help bring high-speed trains to the New Haven line.

“We’ve got to do this in a new way,” he said. “All there is in the Legislature is ‘no, no, no, no.’ ”

To that end, we can urge regular, moderate citizens not part of a special interest on the left or right to bend lawmakers’ ears.

“I’ve never seen us be ahead of the population on issues,” said Godfrey, the Danbury lawmaker, a former chairman of the Council of State Governments, a national forum. “We’re always behind the curve of the public. They’re the leaders.”