By Chris Powell
Supposedly Connecticut’s new paid family and medical leave program is a rousing success after its first six months of giving people cash benefits financed by a half-percent increase in the state income tax. The program reports that as of May 31 it had paid more than $80 million to 19,700 of the 44,000 people who applied.
No doubt those 19,700 were glad to get the money. But the program’s report means that most applicants, 55% — people who suffered what they considered a family or medical emergency — were actually [ITALICS] rejected [END ITALICS] for benefits. These included many people who were self-quarantining, missing work, and losing wages because they were suffering from COVID-19, a situation not covered by the program unless claimants are getting serious medical treatment.
The program’s narrow limits on what are accepted as family and medical emergencies make it objectionable. After all, many people are more disadvantaged by the breakdown of a car or home heating system than by losing wages because of personal or family illness. But the program won’t let people prioritize their own emergencies.
Most objectionable about the program is that it is really only self-insurance, something people could achieve for themselves just by opening a savings account and putting half of 1% of their income into it. This would let people draw on their own money to compensate for [ITALICS] any [END ITALICS] emergency or income loss without having to get state government’s permission and without state government or its insurance administrator taking a cut.
Emergencies are emergencies. People should provide for them and government should encourage them to do so — maybe even require them to do so. But government should respect them enough to let them decide how to spend their own money.
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CAR TAX CAP FAULTY: Also not living up to its advertising is state government’s new cap on municipal property tax rates for cars.
The cap was supposed to save money for car owners, especially those in cities with high property taxes. Rolling in “emergency” money from the federal government, state government is to reimburse municipalities for the lost car tax revenue.
But the federal government has created so much “emergency” money that inflation has exploded not only in this country but also around the world, and this inflation has significantly increased the municipally assessed value of cars, especially used cars, raising their property tax liability — enough, for some people, to wipe out any tax savings.
This isn’t state government’s fault. But then state government would not have found the money for car tax relief if the federal government hadn’t created and distributed the money that caused the inflation that drove up property values and the price of nearly everything else while incomes were failing to keep up.
Given all that inflation, even people whose car taxes have gone down are feeling poorer.
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SCAPEGOATING LANDLORDS: Another purported gift from state government is on its way, this one for residents of municipalities with populations greater than 25,000. A new law requires them to establish fair housing commissions, which will have the power to reverse rent increases — that is, rent-control commissions.
After gasoline and other fuels, inflation may have boosted housing prices and rents more than anything else. Housing prices recently have been their highest ever relative to incomes, driving many people closer to or deeper into poverty.
But inflation isn’t the only reason for the rising cost of housing. In Connecticut housing prices also have been rising because the supply is tightly restricted by municipal zoning regulations. The state law that lets housing developers push back against rejection of their projects has annoyed some suburbanites but has done little to increase housing supply.
The new law requiring municipalities to create rent-control commissions is typical of state government’s evasions and dishonesty. The law blames landlords for high housing prices when government itself has far more responsibility for the problem by preventing supply from responding to demand. Not all landlords are saints but it is government itself that long has been giving them so much more power over tenants.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 