By Chris Powell
What an extraordinary claim the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system made for itself last week. The system, representing the regional universities and the community colleges, declared that its institutions long have been cannibalized by employee compensation costs and so now need big new appropriations to restore their academics and make it possible for more students to attend for “free” — that is, with taxpayers paying for them.
Accordingly, the system proposes to nearly double its spending over the next three years, from $318 million to $597 million. But rather than helping students, the plan seems meant mostly to keep the institutions going amid their declining enrollment. After all, if the universities and colleges cannot induce students to pay at least something for their tuition, just what is the value of the education that is proposed to be given away for nothing?
The cannibalizing complained about by the regional universities and community colleges is not confined to higher education, Two weeks ago the state comptroller’s office reported that state employee compensation increased in 2022 at the fastest rate in years, nearly 10%, exceeding $5 billion for the first time even as state government’s workforce fell by 2,000 people, or 4%, from 51,500 to 49,500.
In any case state government’s obsession with higher education is excessive in light of the steady decline in student proficiency in Connecticut’s [ITALICS] lower [END ITALICS] education. While some of that decline results from the interruption to schooling caused by the recent virus epidemic, test results show that the decline began long before. In the unlikely event that it ever can be established that increased spending improves education in Connecticut, [ITALICS] lower [END ITALICS] education is where it should go.
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ABORTION WORSHIP: Abortion fanaticism reached its highest point last week as a group of Connecticut Democratic state legislators and other Democratic officials, styling themselves the Reproductive Rights Caucus, proposed that state government establish a fund to pay the expenses of residents of other states who come to Connecticut for abortions.
Suddenly it was as if all human need in Connecticut itself had been sated and the state had achieved such prosperity that it could take financial responsibility for the rest of the country.
But even as the Reproductive Rights Caucus was staking its claim on behalf of paying for the abortions of Texans and Alabamans, other interest groups were clamoring at the state Capitol about the many unmet social, medical, educational, nutritional, and business development needs of Connecticut’s own residents.
Governor Lamont heard them and announced that state government would spend another $12 million to help poor tenants catch up on overdue rent payments. But what about medical care for illegal immigrant children? What about the thousands of Connecticut students said to be going to school hungry because their families don’t feed them at home? And how will Connecticut pay for the hundred thousand low-income apartments it is said to lack?
Will the Reproductive Rights Caucus reply to that clamor and explain why abortion is actually the highest social good in the world and should have a superior claim on Connecticut’s resources, no matter the origin of the desire for abortion?
And will any Democratic officials who participate in the clamor for Connecticut’s needy find the nerve to rebuke their colleagues who put abortion above everything else?
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POLITICAL PAYOFF: State politics got even more cynical last week when the Lamont administration announced the appointment of Rob Hotaling as a deputy commissioner in the state Department of Economic and Community Development. It was said that Hotaling was appointed because he made a good impression on Governor Lamont last year as the Independent Party’s candidate for governor.
But that’s not likely the big reason why the governor thinks well enough of Hotaling to give him a job. Rather, last year Hotaling prevented the Independent Party from repeating its 2018 cross-endorsement of the Republican nominee for governor, Bob Stefanowski. Last year Hotaling kept the Independent Party’s 12,000 votes from going Republican, the only way those votes might have meant anything in the election. The supposed Independent turned out to be a Democratic tool.
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Chris Powell (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com) is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut.
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Chris Powell column 