The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Little new in final governor’s debate
The calendar says Halloween but the holiday that best describes the five debates we’ve seen between Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski is Groundhog Day.
That, at least, is the movie version of this governor’s race, including Tuesday evening’s final take at Foxwoods Resort Casino.
Over and over and over again, we’ve heard Stefanowski, a Madison business executive who’s never run for office, say the same words: I will cut your taxes.He will raise your taxes.
Specifically, he claims he’ll end the state personal income tax, the corporate earnings tax and the estate tax — more than 60 percent of the state budget — without raising other revenues. And he accuses Lamont of plotting to raise taxes through payroll deductions, a state motor vehicle property levy and by raising rates of existing taxes.
Lamont, the Greenwich heir and digital entrepreneur, had hoped to put forth a more nuanced argument for himself, about a balanced approach to managing the state with the aspiration of cutting local property taxes and smart investing. Instead, he’s been forced to react to Stefanowski’s promises, which Stefanowski can’t possibly keep.
And so it goes, over and over and over again. So what are we missing?
First, any but the most superficial ideas about how each candidate would manage the state budget, starting with the Feb. 6 deadline — that’s barely more than three months off — for the next governor to craft a spending and taxing plan. We’re looking at a $2 billion shortfall for that budget, so the status quo won’t cut it.
Stefanowski has promised umpteen times that he will find waste to the tune of $2 billion a year. “Does anybody here think I can’t find waste of 10 percent?”
Well, yeah, forgive us for our skepticism, but maybe offer up a couple hundred million, Bob, just as a sort of prenuptial gesture. He talks about the Department of Motor Vehicles, a $10 million toll study, both small potatoes, and the $600 million busway from New Britain to Hartford — which was 80 percent federally financed, which made it a good deal for the state.
“Ten million dollars here, $20 million there, it starts to add up,” Stefanowski said.
It adds up for household budgets but in this state fiscal crisis, it doesn’t. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy actually decreased spending by $250 million over eight years, eliminating more than 4,000 jobs in the regular government operations of state agencies, but the deficits continued.
Lamont, for his part, has criticized Stefanoswki’s piein-the-sky cutting plans but hasn’t said how he’d attack the shortfall, either. Good management, yeah, that will get us there by 2034.
“First thing you do, when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. And you can’t do that by promising to cut 8, 10, 12 billion dollars,” Lamont said Tuesday at Foxwoods — showing that he’s boxed into a corner responding to Stefanowski’s compelling but quixotic vow. His idea: “Invest in education, invest in transportation …. that’s how we start to attract businesses back to our cities.”
True needs, but not a roadmap for balancing the budget.
Oz Griebel, a petitioning candidate and former Hartford area economic development executive, polling in the high single digits, offered some specifics: Dip into the state’s rainy day fund, estimated to reach $2 billion by next summer, and shortchange the teachers’ pension fund for a year or two. Lamont promptly called that “kicking the can down the road again,” just like former Govs. John G. Rowland and M. Jodi Rell did.
Naturally, we’d like to hear about some of the other issues that occupy a governor’s time. You know, casino expansion, recreational marijuana, gun control, criminal justice, social services, housing policy, transportation. The little stuff that makes life fun. In the repetitive din about taxes, we’re forced to figure out those other issues based on political tea leaves.