By Chris Powell
Even though he has decided against seeking re-election, state Treasurer Shawn Wooden has discovered a way to fix state government’s unclaimed property program, which his office supervises.
In January the Connecticut Mirror’s Andrew Brown and Kasturi Pananjad reported that during the last 20 years the program had seized $2.3 billion in the public’s forgotten assets — bank accounts, insurance policies and payments, and so forth — but had returned only 37% of the assets to their rightful owners. Eventually the assets were liquidated and used by state government — some of them to fund state government’s system of financing political campaigns like Wooden’s own.
When the Mirror exposed the scandal, the treasurer’s office first made excuses by claiming that state law prohibited advertising unclaimed properties worth $50 or less, so these items could not even be posted at the treasurer’s internet site. This claim was a lie.
Embarrassed, Wooden decided to do better. The internet list of properties was improved and now the treasurer has a great idea he has proposed as legislation. He would give the treasurer’s office access to other state agency databases so instead of relying on advertising to alert owners of unclaimed property, the treasurer’s staff would strive to locate them and return their money.
The legislation may cost state government a lot of money — more from property that won’t be confiscated anymore than from the extra work done in the treasurer’s office. But then government is supposed to serve the public more than itself.
The scandal here wasn’t the treasurer’s alone. The simple solution proposed by his legislation could have been implemented by governors, treasurers, and state legislators long before Wooden took office in 2019. Those officials were happy to continue what was essentially a lucrative but hidden tax.
Connecticut still has some of those hidden taxes, but at least this one may be repealed soon, and so for a campaign slogan Wooden will be entitled to use “Better late than never.”
Another of Connecticut’s largely hidden taxes is the one imposed on hospitals, a tax that is passed along to insurance companies and patients in the shell game of modern medicine.
Discrediting Governor Lamont’s re-election campaign claim not to have raised taxes, the Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf and Mark Pazniokas note that the Lamont administration canceled a $517 million tax cut Connecticut hospitals had been scheduled to receive.
Additionally, the Mirror reporters write, the Lamont administration’s first two-year budget raised other taxes and fees totaling $490 million, expanded items subject to the sales tax, and canceled or postponed other scheduled tax cuts, including the surcharge on corporate income.
Other tax cuts postponed or canceled under Lamont, the Mirror reports, would have benefited retired teachers, property taxpayers without dependents, and college graduates with technical degrees.
Many times over the years Connecticut taxpayers have been baited with tax cuts promised in the future and then canceled when their time arrived. The Lamont administration is not peculiar in this deceit.
But no one should believe any promise of a state tax cut unless it is legislated with virtually immediate effect, and no one should give much credit to the governor’s claim that he hasn’t raised taxes.
Quite apart from all the postponed or canceled tax cuts, two years ago the governor wanted to put tolls on Connecticut highways and just months ago sought to impose another largely hidden tax, this one on wholesale fuel purchases.
The governor fairly claims that state government is in a much better position financially than when he took office in 2019. To burnish his credentials as a moderate, he also could fairly claim, though of course he won’t, that if any other Democrat was governor, state government’s financial position would be worse.
But though he passes out goodies during his campaign, giving the impression that state government is rolling in money, a week ago his budget office warned that when emergency federal financial aid is exhausted in 2024, the state budget may face a deficit of $1.4 billion unless there are tax increases, spending cuts — or more postponements of promised tax cuts.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
Chris Powell column 