By Chris Powell
Racial preferences in hiring used to be considered unfair because they treated people as members of groups rather than as individuals. This unfairness was euphemized as “affirmative action” and for a few decades the U.S. Supreme Court maintained an ambiguous stance on it. But recently the court took the forthright position that racial preferences are unjust and unconstitutional.
So now advocates of racial preferences are seeking to give them a new euphemism: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Two weeks ago Governor Lamont joined this bandwagon, establishing the Office of Equity and Opportunity within his office “to ensure that state government is a leader in equity and inclusion with the goals of eliminating institutional and systemic barriers and creating opportunity and access for all those it serves and employs.”
The Office of Equity and Opportunity will aim to ensure that “state government offices are representative of the people they serve, and that people from different racial, ethnic, gender, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds have a voice in the decision-making processes.”
That is, if the Office of Equity and Opportunity is taken seriously by state agencies, simple competence and experience will no longer be enough in their staffing. The race, ethnicity, gender, and geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds of job applicants will have to be considered, and agencies will be subject to “statewide diversity, equity, and inclusion benchmarks and measures of progress.”
What’s more, the new office will “identify diversity, equity, and inclusion training opportunities for all state employees.” Of course no state employees are likely to avail themselves of such “opportunities,” thereby implicitly acknowledging their need for political re-education, unless they are paid to take time off from their regular jobs. So they’ll probably be paid for sitting through lectures in political correctness instead of working.
The implication of the governor’s plan is that state government is a bastion of discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities, women, the poor, and residents of certain municipalities — a complaint that, despite state government’s various faults, has seldom been made. Who knew state government was such a nasty place, besides, apparently, the governor?
As public education in Connecticut long has been declining, state agency hiring officers already may have enough trouble finding competent people. If the Office of Equity and Inclusion is taken seriously, hiring officers soon will have to meet quotas having nothing to do with competence.
The governor created the Office of Equity and Inclusion by executive order, apparently because as ordinary legislation the idea could not stand questions in the General Assembly and from the public. With luck the damage to be done and the expense to be incurred here will be limited to one or two more patronage hires in the governor’s office and no one will be more annoyed by the extra political correctness than the governor himself.
PENSION JACKPOT: The governor has nominated former state Rep. David Arconti, D-Danbury, to the Public Utilities Control Authority, and it’s probably an excellent choice. Arconti was House chairman of the General Assembly’s Energy and Technology Committee, where he was regarded as pro-consumer and pro-regulatory reform, and lately has been handling government affairs for the Avangrid conglomerate, owner of United Illuminating, Connecticut Natural Gas, and Southern Connecticut Gas, a position from which he presumably will resign. He has seen all aspects of utility issues.
But Arconti’s nomination is also interesting for illuminating the value of political patronage. As a state legislator Arconti earned only about $40,000 or less each year, but by serving 10 years he qualified himself for a state pension. As a PURA member he’ll be paid $175,000 annually, and his pension will be calculated from the average of his five highest-paid years in state service — and $175,000 is more than four times $40,000.
Even a couple of years with the utility agency will bump Arconti’s pension way up, so like many others who have moved from the legislature to the executive branch, he may have just hit the jackpot.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 