No surprise on Lamont’s reversal

So now he tells us, after being elected.

A few weeks ago U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, the former national teacher of the year, taught her constituents in Connecticut’s 5th District a lesson about politics by using her first official act to break her campaign pledge not to vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker.

With his statement over the weekend reversing himself on highway tolls, Gov. Lamont seems to expect to get away with a similar betrayal.

Not that anybody should be surprised. During his campaign the governor’s position on tolls was always implausible — that he would agree to impose tolls only on those big, bad out-ofstate trucks that were supposedly wrecking Connecticut’s highways, as if those trucks were not also delivering goods to Connecticut and shipping the state’s products to their destinations so the state’s businesses and workers could be paid.

During the campaign various authorities cautioned that federal law and regulation probably would not allow such discrimination in tolling, but as a candidate Lamont stuck to his story. Changing it over the weekend, the governor wrote: “While we are awaiting a ruling from the courts regarding truck-only tolling, our attorneys are pretty certain that if permitted, the tolling could be done only on specific bridges and the generated revenue would be reserved for those bridges . ... Assuming our attorneys are correct, the truck-only option provides too little revenue, too slowly, and too piecemeal to make a meaningful difference” in the state’s transportation infrastructure.

So now he tells us, after being elected.

The governor’s new position is that he could accept general tolling if it includes discounting mechanisms for state residents and the poor. But of course any discounting will be an illusion, since at present no one is paying tolls on Connecticut’s highways. If tolls are imposed, everyone, including the poor, will be paying more to drive, and few people will be consoled by the governor’s belief that as much as half the revenue will be drawn from out-of-state drivers.

Predictable as it was, the governor’s dissembling isn’t the most disappointing aspect of his changed position on tolls. The most disappointing aspect is his implication that he will pursue no substantial economizing in the daily operations and policies of the rest of state and municipal government, though such economizing might produce plenty of money to be transferred to transportation purposes.

After all, what successes can state government’s urban, poverty, education, and government employee labor policies show during the last half century? They show only greater expense, which is why they have never been audited.

At least the administration of the state college and university system can be credited for some realism.

Responding to the clamor from the huge “Everything Should Be Free” caucus of Democrats in the General Assembly, the system’s president, Mark Ojakian, and chief financial officer, Ben Barnes, remarked last week that 60 percent of the system’s students already are getting free higher education because of financial aid, and another 10 percent get enough aid to cover 75 percent of their college costs.

So much “free college” is not really encouraging, since 70 percent of community college students and two-thirds of state university students need remedial high school courses, having gotten into public higher education without first mastering high school.

After all, why bother mastering high school when so much college is just as free as high school itself? The “Everything Should Be Free Caucus” doesn’t realize it, but what’s free is seldom valued.