Malloy has addressed state’s past deficit sins
I f you’re among the great majority of Connecticut’s population that reportedly dislikes Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, especially for the two record-breaking tax increases of his seven years in office, you may have fonder memories of his predecessor, Jodi Rell, who now enjoys her state pension in the warmth of sunny south Florida along with thousands of other former Connecticut residents, many of them also former state and municipal government employees. (There’s no state income tax down there.)
Malloy hasn’t stopped Connecticut’s decline, but an announcement from his office last week was a reminder that he didn’t start it either — that it was already in full force when he took office. He announced that state government has just finished repaying more than $1 billion in debt undertaken by the Rell administration and the 2009 session of the General Assembly to fund state government’s ordinary operating expenses back then.
In olden days when state government still had some standards, bonding for current expenses was considered immoral, not just by flinty Republicans but also by bleeding-heart Democrats. But as recession beset the country a decade ago, Connecticut’s Republican governor and its Democratic legislature could not summon the political courage either to reduce spending or raise taxes as an election approached. So they just borrowed a lot of money, spent it as usual, and left the big debt to their successors, and Rell retired.
Succeeding Rell, Malloy also got stuck with billions of dollars in unfunded pension liabilities for state employees and municipal teachers, negligence going back to the 1930s. Indeed, not that anyone gives him a break about it, but the governor often says that most of the money raised by his tax increases has been used to cover the pension liabilities ignored by his predecessors. They were all too ready to promise benefits they did not dare to appropriate for, since the necessary taxes would have negated the political benefit of buying the government employee union vote.
But Malloy’s basic failure is the same as that of his predecessors — that he could not admit that the state’s tax and spending policies are producing poverty, not prosperity, because their premises are wrong. Now he is the one unable to seek re-election, and despite his tax increases he is leaving his successor the same disaster that was left to him, far more in commitments to spend than revenue to cover them.
If Connecticut’s decline is to be halted, the candidates for governor must confront the mistaken policy premises and specify the changes they would make. They better be big changes and prompt much howling from the special interests that are cannibalizing Connecticut.
Require runoff elections
But Connecticut may have a problem even more urgent than its mistaken policy premises — the huge field of candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations for governor. More candidates will be good if they increase the chance of relevance on the issues. But no candidate has yet spoken relevantly. (Announcing his candidacy last week, Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, who has already served prison time for corruption, provided mere truism by declaring that “we can do better.” He is Exhibit A.)
The problem with the huge field of candidates is that many of them could get into primary elections where a winner could emerge with only a third of the vote or even less. Such a narrow division of the vote would empower special interests and even extremism.
So the forthcoming session of the General Assembly should pass legislation requiring runoff primaries when a primary election fails to produce a winner with a majority, and runoff regular elections too.