Mandatory summer reading for candidates

Connecticut will have a new governor in January. The eight-year Dannel P. Malloy era will be over, and a new one will begin. But the state’s problems, many of them mounting since long before Malloy took office on Jan. 5, 2011, as Connecticut’s first Democratic governor in 20 years, will remain.

And they will be bigger.

In this exhaling period — the state’s legislative session ended Wednesday at midnight, a welcome summer approaches and the gubernatorial election remains some 170 days away — the candidates will put their agendas in order.

Republican delegates were in conclave last weekend at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, where Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton took the nomination in three rounds of voting in a party clearly split in its thinking.

Democrats will convene this weekend at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford to make their choice.

So we will offer here a summer-reading assignment for the would-be state leaders: the 67-page report — 119 pages with appendices — from the Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth, a 14-member group formed by the legislature to look at Connecticut’s place in the world and recommend steps to improve that place.

At 67 pages, the report is a physically modest document. It’s findings and suggestions, though, are of mega-proportion.

On the one hand, a quick read. On the other, material so audacious and potent it deserves prolonged thought, discussion... and action.

The catchphrase of the commission is: “Connecticut’s platform is burning.” In other words, the very foundation on which everything stands is compromised.

Republicans and Democrats should be able to read this report without taking umbrage. The report does not engage in partisan sniping.

There is nothing partisan about the commission’s observation: “Connecticut has a spending problem.”

There’s not a candidate in either party who does not claim to be the person who is going to turn Connecticut around, turn it from a state that people flee, to one that will be a magnet for the young and entrepreneurial.

If there’s a problem with the report, it is that it is unflinching and matter-of-fact in its presentation of the massive problems: billion dollar budget deficits that are growing; financially crippling obligations to state employee pension funds.

These are daunting challenges and, as mentioned above, began decades ago and were left unaddressed by governors who preceded Malloy.

Over the coming summer, the candidates need to read the report and incorporate its findings and recommendations into their plans for the future.

This commission was created by the legislature, let us not forget. Its work product cannot be dismissed. The new governor should embrace the opportunities it affords.

Jan. 9, 2019, is the starting date for a new era in Connecticut. Some person will get the chance that day to put his or her stamp on our state.

We hope it is a well-read person.

There’s not a candidate in either party who does not claim to be the person who is going to turn Connecticut around.