Is Lamont the do-over governor?

Gov. Ned Lamont and his administration are awash on tides of public outcry. Thursday night’s grocery tax reversal is just the latest in a series of ham-handed executions of important public policy initiatives.

In January, Mr. Lamont first broached the subject of taxing groceries as a way to balance the budget. The proposal seemed doomed within days. But months later, a new version of a grocery tax was signed into law and scheduled to go into effect Oct. 1. It would have expanded the state sales tax to “prepared food” designed for “immediate consumption.”

But once the scope of the tax became apparent — accompanied by a good deal of public and political outcry — Mr. Lamont directed the budget office and tax department to scale it back. On Thursday night, it was dead again.

Scott D. Jackson, the commissioner of the Department of Revenue Services, wrote that “when the entire statute is read as a whole, it becomes clearer that the General Assembly did not expand the applicability of the tax, but simply increased the existing tax.”

Translated into reality: “When you realize that you’ve made a colossal public policy blunder, you magically reinterpret the law and pretend it never happened.”

It’s a bewildering about-face.

Didn’t Mr. Lamont know what was in the bill he signed? Didn’t the Democrat legislators who wrote the bill? Or did they think nobody would notice? None of the possible answers inspire confidence. A strong leader would explain the changes in the laws, be transparent about the effects and stand behind them, if they are in the public’s best interest.

Take, for example, the recent back-and-forth over mandatory vaccinations for school-age children. The commissioner of the Department of Public Health, Renee Coleman-Mitchell, first said she would not release school-by-school vaccination data as the department had in the past. Just days later, Mr. Lamont said the data

would be released. It might never be clear whether he overruled his commissioner or decided to change policy after hearing public outcry. In any event, it was another do-over. We hope Mr. Lamont’s recent commitment to remove the religious exemption to vaccinations doesn’t suffer a similar fate.

But the greatest do-over his administration has yet achieved is over highway tolls. What was supposed to be a cornerstone of his governorship — tolls to support infrastructure — started with a plan to toll only trucks. That changed to all vehicles, and plan after plan has been pitched until it all crumbled into an ill-defined embarrassment of public policy guesswork. Mr. Lamont claims to be ready to roll out a new plan, based on newly found sources of federal funding. But if this plan meets equal resistance, is it back to the drawing board? Another do-over, like the grocery tax and the vaccines policies?

Mr. Lamont needs to shape public policy with clear intent instead of waiting to see what floats.