Before secret budget meetings, Lamont should come clean
It falls to Gov. Ned Lamont to untangle the growing number of damaging contradictions that continue to advance in the legislature. The governor is the center of most final decisions—even when he is not leading under emergency powers.
Lamont should be able to shape coherent policies from the legislature’s indulgences, but he’ll have to make some changes in his own habits. The first is to call a moratorium on his public meanderings. As the legislature’s June 9 adjournment approaches, choices must be made. Lamont should announce his plan to us.
We know the Greenwich Democrat is capable of message discipline. He demonstrates it by refusing to criticize his friend Andrew Cuomo, the scandal-plagued Democratic governor of New York. Cuomo has been accused of harassment by a slew of female aides, hiding the number of coronavirus related deaths in New York nursing homes, and using state resources to provide scare virus tests to family members at the height of the pandemic. Our chatty governor has had little to say on the revelations besieging our neighbor. Lamont knows how to stay on task when it matters enough to him.
The legislature, at Lamont’s urgent request early this year, quickly adopted comprehensive legislation to entice data centers to the state. Only the most pressing matters go from proposal to law in a trice. A broad consensus formed and acted to assist the pursuit of an economic development breakthrough.
Then Lamont decided to spoil it all by signaling his support for a tax on digital advertising. Technology companies are sensitive to state tax policies. The growing
industry enjoys many choices for places to expand or relocate. Texas has been a primary beneficiary of corporate flight from California’s Silicon Valley. Miami is making a significant play for tech companies. Texas and Florida offer low taxes, reasonable living costs and state governments that are not in endless conflict with entrepreneurs.
Tech executives and the network of people they rely on to tell them about trends in state policies are paying attention to what Connecticut’s political leaders are doing to encourage and repel businesses. A digital advertising tax will make a bigger impression on them than the opportunity to put some data centers in a handful of towns that offer lower energy costs than the rest of the state.
How to make health care more affordable has vexed state policymakers for decades. Taxing health insurance policies will make it more expensive for many Connecticut residents, but that’s what Lamont proposed in the budget he unveiled in February.
Worse, it is not clear if Lamont supports or opposes a plan to put the state in the health insurance business to compete with Connecticut companies that provide tens of thousands of high paying jobs to state residents. Executives of five companies wrote to Lamont in April to warn him that these policies are expensive and damaging to the state’s economic prospects. This is not 2019, when the governor wrote in an email to top aides that he would defer to his wife, powerhouse venture capitalist Ann Huntress Lamont, on health care policy. Ned Lamont’s wobbles could have profoundly damaging effects on the state’s economy.
The state’s finances are improving, though long-term trends remain alarming. New 2020 census numbers reveal Connecticut’s population grew by less than one percent in the past decade, the lowest in New England and fourth most anemic in the nation. The legislature’s Democrats, with significant majorities over their Republican counterparts, want to raise taxes.
The legislature’s finance committee advanced a bill to raise taxes by the deadline to complete its work. The collapse of predictability — important to attracting and keeping businesses — came into full view a few days later. The House co-chair of the finance committee, Rep. Sean Scanlon (D-Guilford), waited until after the committee’s deadline to reveal his own tax plan, revealing he has no confidence he could persuade the colleague’s he leads of its merits.
The most important budget decisions will now be made by a few people — almost all white male Democrats — in secret meetings. Lamont will gather with a handful of Democratic leaders behind closed doors to decide how to finance and spend $46 billion of the public’s money in the next two years. He ought to explain what he’ll accept and reject to the people of Connecticut before the deal is done.