Why have Democrats failed to reduce Yale’s big tax break?

By CHRIS POWELL

How much is Yale University worth to New Haven, the state, and the country?

Yale is the city’s largest employer and, while its educational property is exempt from property taxes, the university is still  the city’s third-largest taxpayer. 

Complete immigration reform is easy, and Democrats will reject it

Secret payments are corrupt even when UConn teams win

Medicaid could be reduced; and deliver the voter rolls

Attracting students from all over the world and conducting research in many fields, the university aims to spread light and truth — Lux et veritas being Yale’s ancient motto. Thus the university puts the city and the state favorably in the public mind almost everywhere.

But back home the university is increasingly viewed as more of a political colossus and a cash cow. 

Resenting the support Yale gives to the far left and political correctness, the new Republican administration in Washington has imposed a heavy tax increase on huge university endowments. Yale’s stands at $44 billion and this year the tax increase will start costing Yale $300 million, so the university is cutting expenses by reducing graduate student programs.

Meanwhile Yale’s labor unions and other union activists in New Haven are agitating to induce the university to increase its voluntary annual payment to city government, $24 million, to $110 million, an increase of 460%.

Together those new expenses might knock 1% off Yale’s endowment every year. 

While the university could survive that for a long time, of more concern is the attitude of both the Republican national administration and the laborites in New Haven that the university’s property should be theirs to dispose.

At least the revenue raised by the federal tax on university endowments would be available for general national purposes, and the next Democratic national administration might sharply reduce the tax to reward its friends just as the current administration raised the tax to punish its enemies. (The Yale Daily News reported the other day that in 2025 Yale professors made 1,099 contributions to federal political campaigns and not even one went to a Republican.)

The extra revenue the local laborites want Yale to pay to city government on a “voluntary” basis wouldn’t be “voluntary” at all. It is being extorted by the implicit threat of a strike by university employees and other hostile action by labor-affiliated people in New Haven. They don’t see extra payments from Yale as financing a reduction in the city’s high property taxes. No, they see higher compensation for the government class, the class to which most of them belong. 

Yale’s tax-exempt property in the city is hugely disproportionate, about 45% of the value of all property in the city. Removing the university’s tax exemption probably would produce another $140 million in city tax revenue every year. 

But then Yale’s economic contribution to the city is hugely disproportionate too. Without the university New Haven would be just another poverty factory like Bridgeport. New Haven’s suburbs, where many Yale employees live, would be greatly diminished as well.

Geographically Yale is either too big or New Haven is too small. State policy ratifies the disproportion. The problem should be solved by changing that policy, not by subjecting Yale to more extortion by the unions. 

The problem could be fixed simply, at least in principle.

State law could cap property tax exemptions for nonprofit entities. Yale’s tax-exempt property in the city is estimated to be worth $4.5 billion. A cap on property tax exemptions for any single entity — say, $2 billion — would add $2.5 billion to New Haven’s tax rolls. The cap could be implemented gradually to give the university plenty of time to adjust.

Or state government could greatly increase its own financial aid to New Haven and other cities, like Hartford, that are home to much tax-exempt property, though state government already disproportionately finances them.

In any case, insofar as New Haven’s delegation in the General Assembly is large and so influential — it is entirely Democratic and includes the Senate president, Martin M. Looney — it’s a wonder that Yale’s huge property tax exemption remains untouched even as New Haven’s legislators keep hastening illegal immigration, which is very costly to the city, especially its schools.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Complete immigration reform is easy, and Democrats will reject it

By CHRIS POWELL

Whether the fatal shootings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti by immigration agents in Minneapolis were justified or excusable can be determined only by independent investigation, which, unfortunately, the Trump administration seems unlikely to permit.

Secret payments are corrupt even when UConn teams win

Medicaid could be reduced; and deliver the voter rolls

Lamont’s ‘unfinished business’ shouldn’t wait for another term

-But there is no doubt about one thing: Good and Pretti were enthusiastic members of groups that have been searching their city for immigration enforcement actions they could obstruct by confronting agents, blowing whistles, making noise, and otherwise alerting illegal immigrants to scram. To carry a loaded pistol in search of such confrontation, as Pretti did, is to ask for trouble, as he asked for trouble a week earlier at another immigration enforcement action site, spitting at agents and kicking their car. Good asked for trouble by using her car to block the street where an immigration action was underway.

Of course this doesn’t mean shooting them was justified. But since impeding immigration law enforcement is a federal felony, arresting them would have been justified. 

There is much for the government to learn from here. 

It may be better to start an enforcement action by arresting and prosecuting those who show up to obstruct it — not the mere observers and videographers but the people who get in the way or seek to warn the action’s targets.

The Trump administration should realize that masking immigration agents and failing to require them to wear name tags, numbered badges, and body cameras as ordinary police officers do is unAmerican and condemns them to being likened to the Gestapo — and condemns the president himself to be likened to You-Know-Who. With his tough guy persona, the president may enjoy this but it may cost his party control of Congress in November.    

It also may be better to reorient immigration enforcement away from raids entirely, apart from apprehending the most violent criminal illegals. Such reorientation might be done easily and be more effective. It would make living in the United States as an illegal immigrant almost impossible.

That is, federal law could require all employers to use the federal government’s internet-based “e-Verify” system of confirming a job applicant’s legal standing to live and work in the United States.

Employers who hire illegal immigrants, knowingly or not, could be prosecuted, fined, and imprisoned. Federal law could require employers to get and maintain proof of citizenship or legal residency from all job applicants.

Federal law could forbid states from issuing identification documents, including driver’s licenses, to anyone who has not proven citizenship or legal residency. Connecticut and other “sanctuary states” long have been facilitating illegal immigration by issuing such documents to illegals.

Federal law could forbid any government services or welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, including education, except for emergency medical care at hospitals. We’re not going to let people die in the street but we can’t afford to provide medical care to all the world’s poor. Like other “sanctuary states,” Connecticut lures illegal immigrants with free education, social services, and, in some cases, medical care.

And federal law could require requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. Connecticut requires proof of legal age for those who would buy a beer but for voter registration accepts mere affirmation of citizenship, which the state never checks. Somehow merely affirming one’s age isn’t good enough to get a drink.

The president and congressional Republicans should offer congressional Democrats such an immigration law enforcement reform package, addressing the compelling concerns of civil liberty and government accountability. 

Of course the Democrats, including all members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, will reject any effective enforcement. But their rejection will expose their true objective. 

It will show that Democrats remain the party that opened the country’s borders and wants lots more illegal immigration, mass amnesty, and the congressional and state legislative district gerrymandering that will result from millions of non-citizens being counted at the next census, gerrymandering that is being euphemized by Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and many other Democrats as a “path to citizenship.”

It’s really the path to one-party rule forever. 

—–

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Secret payments are corrupt even when UConn teams win

By CHRIS POWELL

Secret payments are contradictions of open, accountable, and democratic government. They are the essence of government corruption. 

Yet last year the General Assembly and Governor Lamont authorized such secrecy. Why? Because it was sought by the University of Connecticut, which is often considered the fourth branch of state government and entitled to whatever it wants.

Medicaid could be reduced; and deliver the voter rolls

Lamont’s ‘unfinished business’ shouldn’t wait for another term

Economizing in schools is illegal; and four years of paid leave drag on

UConn’s rationale for secret payments was ridiculous.

At issue are the de-facto salaries that UConn, like many other schools, has begun paying its varsity student-athletes amid the professionalization of college sports. That professionalization may be fair but it is destroying respect for the college game. The secrecy claimed by UConn will corrupt it.

At UConn’s request the legislature and governor enacted an exemption to Connecticut’s freedom-of-information law for the payments made by the university to varsity student-athletes as part of sports revenue sharing and for use of their “name, image, and likeness” in advertising. The university says it will disclose the total of these payments and the number of student-athletes receiving them but not individual payments.    

“This exemption,” UConn Athletic Director David Benedict told the legislature, “will allow student-athletes to maintain their privacy, increase compensation opportunities, and avoid the competitive disadvantages that would occur if Connecticut universities were required to share contract details.”

Privacy? How can there be privacy for student-athletes who play before huge crowds, often on television, become the subjects of news reports about their performance, and are followed and admired by millions? 

How can there be privacy for student-athletes who hope to parlay their publicity into even more lucrative opportunities in commercial endorsements and the big leagues?

Actual privacy would kill college sports and student-athlete careers.

As for “competitive disadvantages” to UConn if its payments to student-athletes are disclosed, the same argument could be made in respect to all other government employees in Connecticut, whose salaries, thankfully, have not yet been concealed in the name of “privacy.” Everyone in government might like his salary to be secret. The government itself might like it too, since concealing salaries and other payments would prevent ordinary accountability.

For example, UConn might not want the public to know how its payments to men and women student-athletes compare, nor how payments among members of the same team compare, lest the public sense bad judgment, unfairness, or nepotism and demand answers.

UConn doesn’t want to conceal its payments to student-athletes for their sake but for its own.

The university’s new exemption from FOI law will facilitate unfairness, unaccountability, and corruption and be a disastrous precedent. The legislature and the governor should repeal it. Corrupt will be corrupt no matter how many games UConn teams win.

THE UNREAL McCOY: Having given up on politics across the state line, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey — pronounced “McCoy” — has declared her candidacy for the Republican nomination for governor of Connecticut, where she grew up and to which she has returned, insofar as Greenwich is technically still part of the state.

McCaughey’s political life has been erratic. Her governor in New York, George Pataki, a Republican, dumped her, whereupon she became a Democrat and challenged him, only to lose the Democratic primary and then run on the Liberal Party line with even less success. She has supported President Trump and lately has hosted a program on the conservative cable television network Newsmax.

There is speculation that with Trump’s endorsement McCaughey could win the Republican primary for governor, whereupon Trump’s enthusiasm for her would doom her in the election but might win her a job in Washington.

In any case McCaughey’s opening gambit is tedious. She pledges to repeal Connecticut’s income tax, which raises about half state government’s revenue. Voters have dismissed such pledges before, since they are easy to make and impossible to fulfill without massive cuts in state and municipal spending.

Specifying such cuts is where McCaughey should start if she wants to be taken seriously, and even then it will be hard.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Medicaid could be reduced; and deliver the voter rolls

By CHRIS POWELL

State Comptroller Sean Scanlon warns that Connecticut’s state budget is in danger of being devoured by its Medicaid program, whose costs are soaring even as federal aid to the program is being reduced. To ensure that the state’s approximately one million Medicaid recipients maintain their health insurance coverage, Scanlon says “every option should be on the table.” 

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Economizing in schools is illegal; and four years of paid leave drag on

Connecticut’s minimum wage increase indicates worsening poverty

But Scanlon doesn’t really mean that. He means that every possibility for raising more money for Medicaid should be considered, not every possibility for economizing.

There are obvious opportunities for economizing.

Since Connecticut is a “sanctuary state,” a state facilitating and extolling illegal immigration, many recipients of Medicaid and other forms of state medical insurance are illegal immigrants and there is clamor to make still more illegal immigrants eligible. Of course the more that illegal immigrants are made eligible, the more other illegal immigrants will be drawn to the state. State government could save millions by disqualifying illegal immigrants from state insurance and all state government benefits. Like all people, they go where they are subsidized.

Even California, the most populous “sanctuary state,” is reducing state medical insurance for illegal immigrants because of its exploding cost.

How about reducing state financial grants to Planned Parenthood, which provides most abortions in Connecticut? Most are performed on poor women who qualify for Medicaid. State government has given much money to Planned Parenthood and Governor Lamont just awarded the organization another $10 million from the emergency $500 million slush fund the General Assembly recently created for him.

But Connecticut’s chapter of Planned Parenthood has an endowment of nearly $50 million and is in better financial condition than state government itself. So state grants to Planned Parenthood could be suspended until the organization spends its endowment down to, say, $10 million.

Most important, to reduce Medicaid costs state government should examine the causes of poverty that arise from mistaken public policy. After all, Medicaid is insurance for the poor. If, as state Comptroller Scanlon says, about a million state residents are on Medicaid, that is more than a quarter of the state’s population, and if Medicaid expenses are soaring, it’s partly because poverty in Connecticut is soaring as well, even as government spends much in the state in the name of reducing poverty.

Could someone in state government, maybe even the comptroller himself, ask why poverty is worsening?

Is it because so many Connecticut residents lack job skills? 

The state’s economy long has lagged the national economy and is not creating jobs, particularly high-skilled and high-paying jobs, as fast as many other states are. So how come?

Connecticut has a high cost of living, which makes people poor, so where is state government’s program to reduce that cost? Who in authority is reviewing state government’s costs to ensure that all spending is essential and efficient?

Of course it’s always much easier to increase Medicaid spending instead.

* * *

Why should Connecticut be refusing to give its voter registration rolls to the U.S. Justice Department for its investigation of possible election fraud? The Justice Department has had to sue for it.

Connecticut’s own freedom-of-information law makes most of the data public. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas says the Justice Department also wants the voter registration data that shows Social Security and driver’s license numbers, which state law forbids disclosing outside government.

But the federal government already has all Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers are typically available to the federal government through law enforcement data banks.

So it seems that Thomas and state Attorney General William Tong oppose providing the data simply because they detest the Trump administration and don’t want it to pursue the possibility of election fraud.

If there’s no fraud and no illegal immigrants have registered to vote in Connecticut, disclosure of the voter roll data may help confirm that. And if the data does provide evidence of fraud, shouldn’t it be disclosed even if that scares the secretary and the attorney general?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Lamont’s ‘unfinished business’ needn’t wait for another term

By CHRIS POWELL

Being governor is a tough job, especially in Connecticut, where thousands have their hands out and the more they’re given, the more they want and expect. The state has not prospered particularly during Ned Lamont’s two terms, but given his party’s ravenous constituencies, things probably would be worse under any other Democrat. Lamont has restrained spending and taxes more than the big Democratic majorities in the General Assembly would have liked.

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Connecticut’s minimum wage increase indicates worsening poverty

‘Affordability’ doesn’t apply to cost of state employees

But state government remains poorly managed and in some cases not managed at all, as was suggested by the audit released this week by the state Economic and Community Development Department about corruption in “anti-poverty” grants that the department administered only nominally. The grants were actually controlled by state Sen. Douglas McCrory, D-Hartford, who routed them through a special friend who, the audit found, took a lot of the money for herself in the guise of providing services not actually rendered.

The governor quickly tried to take ownership of the audit, joining in its announcement. He called it “a strong reminder that when taxpayer dollars are involved, we have zero tolerance for fraud, waste, or mismanagement.” 

This was nonsense, for such grants have been routinely allocated to Democratic state legislators as raw patronage without oversight or evaluation of results. The governor has gone along with this. The corruption exposed by the audit is a matter of his own indifference and the negligence of his economic development commissioner.

The governor said Senator McCrory should “step back” from Senate business but didn’t propose to stop the patronage grants. 

And are Connecticut’s cities any less poor for the grants, or less poor for any “anti-poverty” programs? Is poverty any less of a patronage business?

In a recent interview with the Connecticut Examiner, Lamont said he was glad to answer for his record and, if elected to the third term he seeks, will address “some unfinished business.”

Where to begin? And why wait? 

Given the terrible cold descending on the state this weekend, “unfinished business” — unstarted, really — could begin with the “cold weather protocol” the governor has invoked. This happens when state government and social-service agencies summon the mentally ill off the streets at night to various overcrowded indoor facilities and send them back outside in the morning in state government’s belief that the best therapy for mental illness is fresh air. 

More than a hundred of them have died outdoors in Connecticut in the last year.

For decades this therapy has saved state government millions of dollars on mental hospitals, money spent instead on state employee raises and pensions.    

Always needing urgent review is the Correction Department. Two Fridays ago the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee held a hearing about the department’s chronic management failures, starting with the report issued by the state auditors last July showing that 15 of the 18 failures cited by the audit were cited by previous audits as well. The new audit found that the department lately had paid more than $800,000 in salaries for excessive administrative leave.  

Two weeks ago the state inspector general concluded that the deaths of two inmates at the state prison in Newtown within days of each other in 2024 were caused by mistakes with medication administered by medical contractors. This week the department’s ombudsman issued a report criticizing not only inadequate medical care for prisoners, a longstanding issue, but also unsanitary conditions and excessive lockdowns.

The correction commissioner said again that the department aims to do better, so that will suppress the issue for another year, since nobody cares much about prisoners besides the ombudsman, whose appointment the governor obstructed.

As for state taxes, however well the governor has restrained them, much of that restraint has always been achieved by pushing what probably should be state expenses down to the municipal level, where they are recovered through higher property taxes, though Connecticut’s property taxes are disgracefully high. 

For many years that too has been “unfinished business.”

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Economizing in schools is illegal; and four years of paid leave drag on

By CHRIS POWELL

Hamden Mayor Adam Sendroff says the town is in “a financial crisis.” Indeed, the town long has been struggling financially. So the mayor has asked town departments to reduce their budgets by 5%.

Connecticut’s minimum wage increase indicates worsening poverty

‘Affordability’ doesn’t apply to cost of state employees

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But Hamden’s school superintendent, Gary Highsmith, has told the Board of Education not to worry about it. For state law forbids municipalities from reducing school budgets except in a few special circumstances, and even those don’t apply to Hamden, because, since the town’s students perform so poorly, the state Education Department has declared the school system an “alliance district,” where cutting spending is doubly prohibited.

Since Hamden’s schools spend about half the town’s money, any savings will have to be exacted disproportionately from the remaining half of town government. 

One premise of the law forbidding cutting school budgets is that student performance correlates directly with per-pupil spending, though there is little evidence for that, since student performance is almost entirely a matter of parenting. The real premise of the law is that teacher unions, the largest political force in every city and town, must be gratified at any cost.

The law is based on another nonsensical premise — that school systems are perfectly efficient and effective so there is never any need to save money. Elected officials and taxpayers shouldn’t even think about it or ask critical questions. There’s no point in that, since saving money in lower education in Connecticut is actually against the law. 

Yes, Connecticut should just keep raising taxes to gratify the teacher unions and keep electing the same people to run state government in the interest of the people on the payroll, not the interest of the public.

*

Three state government agencies are implicated in a spectacular waste of money that has failed to gain the attention of anyone in political authority. 

According to the Norwich Bulletin, an assistant principal at Ellis Technical High School in Killingly, Roland Navarro, has been on paid administrative leave for four years, having collected nearly $600,000 in salary and many thousands more in fringe benefits, and even having taken an interim job with a real estate agency to get a second income while the agencies have been pondering what to do about him — even as it seems that there’s no reason to do anything.

The story goes this way. 

One day in 2021 Navarro arrived at school forgetting that he had left a pistol in his car. He knew that guns are illegal on school property. A student rotating the tires on Navarro’s car found the pistol and alerted Navarro, who wrapped it up, took it outside, and put it in the trunk of another assistant principal’s car. At the end of the day he retrieved the pistol and took it home.

The school investigated and punished Navarro with a two-day suspension. But the state police, the Windham County state’s attorney, and the state Department of Children and Families began investigations as well. The state’s attorney charged Navarro with possession of a gun on school grounds, a felony. 

Navarro pleaded not guilty and, predictably, the court granted him accelerated rehabilitation, a probation available to first offenders, since he hadn’t meant or done any harm. Accordingly in July 2024 the charge against him was dismissed.

But DCF and the state Board of Education, from which Navarro has a teaching license, kept investigating. The board now is said to be waiting for a hearing officer’s report on a jurisdictional issue Navarro raised. If he is allowed to keep his license, the technical school system can decide whether to reinstate or fire him.

Almost five years have passed and no one in authority has hastened the case to conclusion or just pulled the plug on it. The money spent investigating case well may exceed the $600,000-plus paid to Navarro during his leave.

His accidentally leaving a gun in his car may turn out to be the financial windfall of his life even as state government seems not to have noticed the expense.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Connecticut’s minimum wage increase indicates worsening poverty

By CHRIS POWELL

Connecticut’s minimum wage, having been indexed to inflation since 2019, rose to $16.94 per hour this month and was celebrated by Governor Lamont and state Labor Commissioner Dante Bartolomeo.

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The governor contended that the increases have not impaired business conditions as was feared when they began. But Connecticut’s business conditions are poor. The state lags most other states in economic growth, and raising the minimum wage discourages many small businesses.

Indeed, Commissioner Bartolomeo’s celebration of the minimum wage increase actually implied severe weakness in both the economy and the state’s workforce.

“This is not just something for teenagers,” the commissioner said of the minimum wage. “This is not just an after-school job.” The minimum wage, she said, is disproportionately earned by women of color, and “this is how they support themselves and their families.”

If Connecticut really has so many people trying to support themselves and even families on minimum-wage jobs, then many people have reached adulthood without acquiring substantial job skills, or else the state’s economy is producing too many menial jobs and not enough better-paying jobs requiring skills. Or the problem may be both. And when the minimum wage goes up, inflation quickly nullifies it anyway, in part because the people advocating higher minimum wages, like the people in charge of government, don’t care much about inflation.

Connecticut’s increasing dependence on the minimum wage is an indication of worsening poverty. While politicians are chattering about “affordability,” most of the solutions they have proposed don’t address affordability at all — don’t address reducing the cost of living.  

Instead their solutions, like increasing the minimum wage, are mostly matters of increasing government subsidies to the poor at the expense of employers and taxpayers. The subsidies don’t reduce the cost of living but increase the cost of government, distort markets, and — worse — distract from and rationalize the causes of poverty.

After all, poverty correlates overwhelmingly with fatherlessness and inadequate education, and both correlate overwhelmingly with the welfare system’s destruction of the family and social promotion’s destruction of academic standards. But addressing the causes of poverty is not on the agenda of anyone in authority in Connecticut. Government just keeps throwing money at poverty without regard to results.

VOICES FOR HIGHER TAXES: The big thinkers at Connecticut Voices for Children have studied how state government can make up for reductions of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to state social programs and claimed to have figured it out in a report published the other day. 

Their solution is to raise taxes and spending. Particularly:

— Diminish the “fiscal guardrails” that have restricted state government spending, prevented budget deficits, and even allowed state government to catch up a little on its pension obligations.

— Raise taxes on the rich and the most valuable estates.

— Do more auditing of taxpayers. That is, raise taxes some more.

What insight! State government can get more money by … raising taxes!

Of course this long has been the platform of the political left in Connecticut, which presumes that since raising taxes generally won’t be popular, even more of the tax burden should be put on a small minority.

In a better world tax rates, even those on the rich, would be set according to what is considered fair, and would be held there until fairness could be shown to require changing them. But in Connecticut tax rates are to be raised whenever the government wants to spend more.

State government is full of excessive spending — from its workforce to education to anti-poverty programs. Identifying and publicizing the excess, showing how it harms both taxpayers and the needy, would be a great service. But, being part of the government class, Connecticut Voices for Children never looks to the excess in state government for money that could be saved or redirected to better purposes. 

So the group would be more honest to call itself Connecticut Voices for Higher Spending and Taxes. The “children” part is just sanctimonious and tiresome whitewash.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

‘Affordability’ doesn’t apply to cost of state employees

By CHRIS POWELL

While it would be impossible politically, freezing most state government salaries for a year or two would be fair, for as Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant reported the other day, those salaries have increased by more than 30%, more than private-sector salaries have increased, since Ned Lamont became governor in 2019.

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The average state employee salary, the newspaper said, is now about $95,000, which doesn’t include the value of the gold-plated medical insurance and the armor-plated job security enjoyed by state employees.

But Lamont is a Democrat, and just as no Roman emperor dared to reduce the pay of his legions, no Democratic governor dares to reduce the pay of his party’s legions, the state employee unions. Lamont already has pledged to give the unions 4.5% raises this year, a state election year. That will be more than enough to insure that union members use some of their many paid days off to work for Democratic campaigns. This kickback is Connecticut’s biggest public campaign financing program, completely one-sided.

What’s more disgraceful is that the governor just shrugs at the many particular excesses in state government’s payroll and work rules, like the guarantee to state employees that they can work many days from home each week, a guarantee with substantial cash value since it sharply reduces employee commuting expense.

The governor says he wants state employees to come back to their offices but notes that a 2021 labor contract arbitration decision concluded that working from home is a negotiated benefit and can’t be changed without the agreement of the unions.

Of course the governor knows that the arbitration decision is not really the last word. He and the General Assembly could remove working from home as a subject of contract negotiation and reclaim for the governor the power to designate workplaces. They could even repeal binding arbitration. While such legislation might require of the governor and most legislators more respect for the public interest than they have ever summoned, at least theoretically it could be done.

Other state employment excesses recently enumerated by the Courant include state employee overtime and pensions. 

Overtime long has been out of control and now is approaching $400 million per year, being worst in the Correction Department, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the state police. Many state employees earn more in overtime than in base salary. 

In 2024 about 20 made more than $200,000 in overtime, about 1,700 made more than $50,000 in OT, and about 2,600 earned more than $40,000 in OT.

Most state employees love the option to work overtime and no one in authority wants to attempt the simple management necessary to minimize it. There’s no penalty for its excessive use.

Many retired state employees now are receiving annual pensions of $200,000 or more, and as Connecticut columnist Red Jahncke has often noted, the constant raises for state employees drive up the state’s pension obligations as well, devouring most of the extra money state government lately has been putting into state pension funds to improve their solvency. The extra money really hasn’t purchased much more solvency.

The leader of the Republican minority in the state House of Representatives, Vincent Candelora of North Branford, possibly the most sensible state legislator, proposes that state pensions should be capped at $100,000 or $150,000 annually. Such an amount still would provide comfortable retirement, quite apart from personal savings and any Social Security benefits state employees had happened to earn.  

“Affordability” has become the big buzzword in politics in Connecticut and nationally but it isn’t yet being applied to state government. For as H.L. Mencken wrote a century ago, if an elected official found that he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. Since, on the whole, Connecticut’s taxpayers don’t pay much attention to state government, they remain the specialty on its menu.

—–

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

-END-

Mayor panders to the mob, inviting more insurrection

By CHRIS POWELL

If the country is in big trouble, it’s not just because the president pretends he has authority to wage war wherever he wants. It’s also because the country is full of people who are striving to obstruct immigration law enforcement, full of people who hallucinate that the government is getting ready to kill them, and full of elected officials who pander to both groups.

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Among those officials now is Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam, who last week blamed the president and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the conflict that occurred during a protest outside the federal building in Hartford, where ICE has an office.

Some protesters went behind the building and blocked the garage exit as two vehicles, presumably operated by ICE agents, were leaving. Video shows at least one protester in front of and leaning on an exiting car. Witnesses say someone, presumably an ICE agent, pepper-sprayed the blockaders and then the two cars made their way out by pushing through the mob, with a protester being knocked over but not injured.

The incident was the protesters’ fault, not ICE’s, just as the fatal incident in Minneapolis last week was caused by people who also set out to impede an enforcement operation.

At a press conference the day after the Hartford incident, Mayor Arulampalam called it “the direct result of the lawlessness and recklessness of the Trump administration.” Oh, sure — Trump and ICE made those protesters block the garage, and the ICE agents were wrong to try the clear the exit so they could do their work, though they are federal police officers just like FBI agents and impeding them is a federal felony.

With the mayor declaring that the work of the immigration agents is illegitimate, more criminal interference with ICE may be expected in Connecticut, at least until the FBI and local police make some arrests.

This doesn’t mean that the fatal shooting of the protester by the ICE agent in Minneapolis was justified, though it may have been. It means that she and her friends were not just protesting peacefully but seeking confrontation and interfering, just like the protesters at the Hartford federal building garage.

This distinction was lost on the people who held other protests in Connecticut last weekend — and lost on the journalists who interviewed them without posing critical questions.

A protester from Fairfield said, “It feels like it could happen to anyone now,” though “it” doesn’t seem to have happened to anyone not impeding or caught up in an ICE enforcement operation.

A protester from Stratford concurred, saying, “I don’t know who among us is safe,” though no one at her protest was attacked either.

Critical questions being out of fashion in journalism in Connecticut, no one seems to have asked the protesters just what, if anything, should be done about the illegal immigration that has overwhelmed the country. But questions should have been prompted by the signs the protesters carried, which called for ICE to be abolished or banished from Connecticut. 

So should there be no immigration law enforcement?

That’s the implication of the slogan on many other protest signs: “No human is illegal.” But that’s a straw man; no one has made such a silly claim. What’s illegal is the presence in the country of people who have not been properly admitted after a background check. The sanctimony of this slogan seems to advocate a return to open borders.

ICE needs closer supervision and Congress should require it. As with regular police officers, agents making arrests should always be identified by badges and name tags and should not be masked. As with ordinary arrests, detainees should be promptly identified on public registers so press and public can keep track of them.

But as with regular police officers, ICE agents may be more sinned against than sinning, as they are sometimes assaulted by their desperate targets and protesters. People who impede them are insurrectionists as much as the January 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol were.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)

Minneapolis incident distracts from the big underlying issues

By CHRIS POWELL

Seven years ago a Wethersfield police officer shot and killed a motorist who drove straight at him after evading a traffic stop. While police video of the incident indicated that the officer could have gotten out of the way in time and didn’t have to stand his ground, the state’s attorney concluded that the shooting was justified because the officer reasonably feared for his life.

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If those who already have decided that the immigration agent who last week shot and killed a woman at an enforcement scene in Minneapolis was wrong — among them Mayor Jacob Frey, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and Attorney General William Tong, and most other Democratic officials — and those who already have decided that the agent was right — among them President Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and most Republican officials — will drop their partisan hysteria and let the issue be decided through regular legal procedure, it likely will hinge on the standard in the Wethersfield case. 

That is, did the agent reasonably fear for his life?

Video of the Minneapolis incident suggests that the driver, leaving the scene, was trying to turn enough to avoid striking the agent, but her car may have touched him. It was close. The agent might or might not have had time to jump aside, but he might not have been obliged to.

The video also shows that the driver had parked her car sideways across both lanes of the street, blocking traffic; that she refused an order to get out of the car; and that she was trying to avoid apprehension — just like the driver shot and killed in Wethersfield seven years ago.

The driver in Minneapolis and many others on the scene seem to have been trying to obstruct immigration law enforcement. The New York Post reports that the driver was a member of a group that does just that. If she was looking for trouble, she found it.  

As for the immigration agent, if he was too fast on the draw, in a previous enforcement action he had been dragged and injured by the car of another fleeing motorist. Of course this might have affected his judgment of what constitutes reasonable self-defense, and in turn might affect a jury’s judgment, though as a “sanctuary city” Minneapolis might not be able to supply an impartial jury.

Sad as the Minneapolis incident is, it shouldn’t distract from the big underlying issues — whether federal immigration law is to be enforced, whether the country is to have open borders again as under the previous national administration, and whether states can nullify federal law. Until recently the latter issue had been thought settled since Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox in 1865 and again since the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and ’60s.  

Mayor Frey and the immigration law enforcement protesters in Minneapolis, Connecticut, and elsewhere explicitly favor nullification. Their signs call for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and prohibiting deportations, and they even carry the flags of other countries. Making himself even more vulgar than the president he detests, the mayor used an obscenity on national television as he proclaimed that he wanted ICE to get out of his city, as if it could secede.

Connecticut’s Democratic officials are barely more subtle. The General Assembly and governor keep enacting laws to hinder immigration law enforcement in the state.

Responding to the Minneapolis incident, Connecticut U.S. Rep. John B. Larson said he would introduce legislation “allowing states to prevent ICE from operating in their borders without full coordination with state and local law enforcement agencies.” 

“Full coordination”? Connecticut law prohibits it, and officials in the state’s “sanctuary cities” surely would betray ICE enforcement actions to local illegals. The nullifiers would love that.

Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal wants to provide all illegal immigrants with a “path to citizenship” — a euphemism for another mass amnesty.

It’s crazy but maybe anything can happen politically now that the cause of open borders has gained a martyr.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)