Infrastructure becoming an asset for Lamont

Even before final passage in the U.S. House, the massive federal infrastructure spending package is yielding political benefits for Gov. Ned Lamont, a firstterm governor well into an undeclared campaign for reelection in 2022.

The bill would send at least $5.38 billion to Connecticut over the next five years, allowing the Lamont administration to move forward on promised transportation spending stymied by the General Assembly.

“If that becomes law, that’s going to be the single largest increase in transportation in our nation’s history since Eisenhower, since the start of the interstate highway system,” said Garett Eucalitto, the deputy commissioner of transportation.

The political impact was evident last week at a meeting of the Connecticut State Building Trades Council addressed by Eucalitto, Commissioner Katie Dykes of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and Lamont.

A potential flash point — the administration’s opposition to construction of a gas-fired power plant in Killingly long favored by the trades as a source of good jobs — was mentioned only in passing.

Instead, the governor was sent home with a standing ovation and a significant promise from Keith Brothers, a Laborers union leader elected last week as president of the statewide building trades council.

“You’ll always have our support,” Brothers said.

An issue that once threatened Lamont’s hopes for a second term, infrastructure spending now is an asset for the governor, largely due to factors beyond his control.

The rollout of his proposal for highway tolls was a disaster that kept Lamont on the defensive throughout 2019 and into the first weeks of 2020, when the governor finally declared the effort dead.

He ended his first year with approval ratings among the lowest of any governor.

Lamont’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic was approved in polls by about 70 percent of voters, lifting his overall approval to 56 percent in the most recent survey, according to a Sacred Heart University poll in May.

On the infrastructure issue, his failure to win passage of highway tolls has been offset by the passage of a mileage fee on heavy trucks, an increase in fuel-tax revenue due to higher prices, and the promise of unprecedented federal largesse.

The federal bill passed by the evenly divided Senate and awaiting final action in the Democratic-controlled House would more than triple the money due to Connecticut through various spending formulas.

The $5.38 billion it would generate for the state over five years is measured against the $1.62 billion over the previous five, said Eucalitto, the deputy DOT commissioner. Other competitive grants also would be on the table.

In remarks to the building trades, who met last week at Mohegan Sun to elect new officers, Lamont acknowledged that finding state funding for infrastructure has been a problem but one mitigated by the election of Joe Biden as president.

“I have to convince legislators every day, these are the most important investments we can make,” Lamont said. “We’re making these investments, we’re going to be making these investments for the foreseeable future. And I’ve got a partner down in Washington, D.C.”

Lamont was one of Biden’s earliest supporters, writing a check to his campaign on April 25, 2019, the day Biden formally became a candidate.

“I’ll be blunt, I don’t like to do politics all the time. But I was a Joe Biden guy because Joe Biden knew the importance of infrastructure,” Lamont told the trades. “And he’s putting his money where his mouth is — this is the biggest infrastructure bill in the history of this country.”

The governor’s struggles over tolls in 2019 coincided with a low period for the building trades, whose leadership resented the failure of the legislature’s Democratic majority to rally around the governor’s plan.

The trades also had complained that the rest of the labor movement in Connecticut was insufficiently supportive, prompting a discussion about withdrawing from the AFLCIO, the federation that often speaks for labor in Hartford.

In a vote by their executive council, the trades recently affirmed their intention to remain. One reason was passage of Senate Bill 999, a measure that labor says will ensure that union labor gets a significant share of clean-energy projects.