Goals, policies on cities need to match

Gov. Ned Lamont and his team say all the right things about the importance of cities to the state’s economic future. The policy prescriptions don’t always match up.

Lamont’s economic development director, David Lehman, said last week the administration has set a goal of doubling the populations of the state’s cities in the next 25 years. This would presumably allow Connecticut, which famously has no major cities, to compete with some of the economic juggernauts that have been stealing our jobs for the past decade.

For instance, Boston. The largest city in New England has no advantages over Connecticut in terms of taxes, weather or cost of living, three commonly cited reasons for businesses abandoning this state. But it is a place where people, particularly young people, want to live, which makes it an attractive location to set up shop.

Lehman has much to say on this issue, and a lot of it makes sense. Connecticut has long been seen as a “suburban commuter utopia,” Lehman told U.S. News. “We have a lot of beautiful, small New England towns. But our big cities have been, if anything, getting smaller.”

He’s right about the shrinking populations. Of the state’s largest cities, only Stamford and New Haven have shown any growth recently, with the rest mostly stagnant or on the decline. And it’s worth noting that even doubling the population of any Connecticut city, all of which have under 150,000 people, would leave them less than half the size of Boston, which has near 700,000.

But there are also obstacles of the governor’s own making. Lamont has railed (in his good-natured way) about his predecessor’s borrowing record and instituted what he called a “debt diet” that in his first year dramatically limited activity by the State Bond Commission. But those limits, which Lamont said would continue until a transportation deal is reached, have a huge impact on Connecticut cities.

Brownfield remediation falls into this category. Under Dannel P. Malloy, Connecticut was a leader in funding brownfield cleanups, and for good reason. This state has a disproportionately large share of contaminated properties, mostly concentrated in the cities, and they will never be returned to active use by relying solely on the private market. Only public help will bring them back on the tax rolls, and the state had a solid record of doing that under Malloy.

In a phone interview Thursday, Lehman said brownfields would be a priority even with a debt diet. “We need to focus on areas where there will be a high return on investment,” he said. “Brownfields are at the top of my list.” But until there’s a transit plan, all that is on hold.

Then there’s the transit plan itself. Lamont and leading legislators are in agreement on what to spend money on, they just need to figure out how to raise the money. But what goes unsaid is that the spending agenda the governor has presented — some $19 billion worth — does not favor a goal of urban redevelopment. Instead, it’s a status quo plan that prioritizes highways and, in effect, more suburban sprawl.

It’s not a surprise; the Legislature is at the behest of suburban interests, and a true city-centric transportation plan, one that focused on mass transit and pedestrian amenities at the expense of cars, would have no chance of passing. Lawmakers want more lanes on the highway, so that’s what they’re going to get. We may be a blue state, but Connecticut is deeply conservative when it comes to infrastructure.

Lehman says Lamont is focusing on job creation in cities and looking to take advantage of Opportunity Zones, a federal program where investors can be eligible for tax benefits. Doubling the population of cities could take decades, he said. But even at that time scale, high-wage jobs are more likely to come to a city with a robust transit system and plenty of amenities. They will be more likely to come to a city with cleaned-up brownfields that have been turned from rusting factories into housing and other new development. All that costs money that Lamont has to date seemed uninterested in spending.

What the governor doesn’t get to do is push a pro-suburban agenda and then declare himself a city-focused leader. He sounds good when he talks about an urban-based economy as the key to Connecticut’s future. But his spending priorities too often say otherwise.

Hugh Bailey is editorial page editor of the Connecticut Post and New Haven Register. He can be reached at hbailey@hearstmediact.com.