The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
COLIN MCENROE
With Lehman pick, dudes shouldn’t abide
“Sometimes there’s a man ... I won’t say a hero, ’cause, what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man. And I’m talkin’ about the Dude here. Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s the Dude, in Los Angeles.”
Actor Sam Elliott speaks these words at the beginning of “The Big Lebowski,” and I think we all know what he means, although here in 2019, it seems important to note that “a man” is a placeholding term that could easily encompass a broad range of genders, orientations, pronouns, food allergies, mechanical limbs, etc.
But sometimes, there’s a man.
And I’m talking about Martin M. Looney here.
Looney became the president pro tempore of the Senate in 2015 after a decade as its majority leader. His time in office has been characterized by respectfulness, decency and kindness, qualities which are generally assigned a net value of zero in the state Legislature. For that reason, he is easy to underestimate.
This week, Looney did something unusual. He voted in committee to send forward one of Gov. Ned Lamont’s cabinet-level nominees for a full Senate confirmation vote but made it clear he might not be able to support the nominee in that final vote.
You don’t see that a lot. These guys are from the same party.
It means Looney thinks what I think. Lamont made a mistake. I have written elsewhere about what this mistake was. David A. Lehman has volunteered himself as Lamont’s Commissioner of Economic Development and chief economic policy adviser. Lehman has been serving the United States since 2004 at Goldman Sachs. From 2006-08, he was co-head of the Goldman unit most heavily involved in taking all of us on a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride through a crumbling economy. As I have written elsewhere, Lehman was not a bit player in the story of the Great Recession. He was an active participant in some of the worst practices associated with it. He shouldn’t be commissioner of anything.
Lamont might have arrived at the same conclusion if he had put any time at all into vetting Lehman, but he nominated him about 10 days after meeting him. According to Lamont, Lehman — “an amazing good citizen” — just reached out to Lamont through a friend and volunteered to come on board.
See, I would have a lot of questions about that. Winter is coming, as they say. Is it possible that Goldman Sachs is quietly asking some of the White Walkers of 2018 to move along? Or that Lehman knows from experience what it’s like to go through a recession in a key Goldman job and would prefer to be somewhere else this time?
On the other hand, it’s reassuring to hear that Ned has a friend somebody could reach out to. In assembling this administration, Lamont has shown no signs of ever having known anyone before in his life. His inner circle is made up of new acquaintances. In fact, if, any time between Nov. 1 and Jan. 30, you and Ned Lamont were both waiting for your tables at Chili’s and the wait ran longer than 20 minutes and you were not offered a key staff role, you should probably enroll in a Tony Robbins seminar, because Ned seems to have hired everybody else he met during that time.
Anyway, Lehman was a mistake, but Lamont can’t admit it without losing face. The Senate will probably confirm him, although I really don’t know why. At least Marty Looney is saying that “due diligence” requires deciding whether our proposed new economy czar has, historically, done more to hurt the economy or help it. You know, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
Good witch! says rookie Sen. Alex Bergstein, DGreenwich. “I applaud you for your selflessness,” Bergstein told Lehman Tuesday. No, no, no.
Selfless is leaving to do volunteer work in Haiti. Selfless is taking a few of your outlandish yearly partner bonuses and using them to help people devastated by the Great Recession.
Volunteering to be the economic boss of us is not selflessness.
Let me offer a prediction. After Lehman is confirmed, Bergstein will revive her idea, raised earlier this session, about “securitization” of tolls.
Typically, this involves a state getting money up front from private financiers. In return, the private entities get to run your state’s toll system over the course of a long-term lease, milking whatever comes out of its udder-shaped gantries. What could go wrong?
In 2006, Indiana struck such a deal with a SpanishAustralian ad hoc partnership. The state got $3.8 billion up front. The private consortium got a 75-year lease to operate the toll road. The partnership eventually declared bankruptcy, precipitating what Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly called “a mess of epic proportions.”
Indiana’s adviser on the securitization? Goldman Sachs. They selflessly received $20 million.
This is the world we’re entering. I’m scared, Marty.
But sometimes there’s a man. Colin McEnroe’s column appears every Sunday, his newsletter comes out every Thursday and you can hear his radio show every weekday on WNPR 90.5. Email him at colin@ctpublic.org. Sign up for his newsletter at http://bit.ly/colinmcenroe.