By Chris Powell
Democrats throughout the country, including Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, are charging that the Trump administration wants to privatize government. By “privatize” the Democrats really mean that the Trump administration is cutting off their vast patronage from the federal government, as if elections mustn’t be allowed to change things.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has acknowledged a desire to strengthen the national economy by enlarging the private sector while shrinking the federal government. That’s a good objective, and shrinking the government is quite different from privatizing it.
Besides, to a great extent the federal government long has been privatized under both Democratic and Republican administrations, with major industries achieving “regulatory capture” and government failing to enforce antitrust law vigorously.
Despite the complaints from Connecticut Democrats about “privatizing” government, the state has led the country in privatizing government in a crucial respect: education.
This privatization has occurred not with charter schools and vouchers redeemable at church and other private schools but with ordinary laws that hobble administration of public schools.
Connecticut’s teacher tenure law is so strict and its processes so expensive that few teachers are ever fired. Now the state’s teacher unions are advocating legislation to make firing teachers even more difficult. The legislation would require a school administration to have “just cause” for firing a teacher, not just the “due and sufficient” cause now required. A “just cause” requirement would impose more impediments on schools and take the firing decisions away from a school board and place them with an arbiter.
Meanwhile binding arbitration for teacher union contracts gives the unions great control over teacher salaries and working conditions, again diminishing the authority of school boards.
A state law demanded by the unions 50 years ago exempts teacher evaluations from disclosure under state freedom-of-information law, the only government employee evaluations so exempted. In Connecticut you have no right to know how well your child’s teachers are performing.
That is, the big problem with public education in Connecticut is that it really isn’t public at all. It has no accountability. It has been privatized by the people it employs.
Ironically, charter and church schools are far more accountable, since, unlike public schools, they have no guarantee of students. To stay in business, private schools have to be better than public schools, which get more money each year regardless of performance.
DEMOCRATS AGAINST DEMOCRACY: Many Democrats in Connecticut prattle about saving democracy from the Trump administration, but some of those Democrats also are advocating a state constitutional amendment that would sharply curtail democracy.
It’s being called the environmental rights amendment, and it would establish “an individual right to clean and healthy air, water, soil, ecosystems, and environment, and a safe and stable climate.”
Exactly how clean and healthy, safe and stable would Connecticut have to be? The amendment doesn’t say.
So in the absence of clear definitions in the constitutional amendment, law, or regulations, lawsuits would ask the courts to produce the definitions. The environmental rights amendment would invite many lawsuits to establish public policy. Courts also would be asked to determine how violations of “clean and healthy” and “safe and stable” would be remediated, and the means and costs of remediation.
Thus the governor and General Assembly — the elected branches of government — would be relieved of their responsibilities by the unelected branch, the judiciary, as every claim made on behalf of a “clean and healthy” and “safe and stable” environment would be dressed up as a constitutional right.
The amendment is platitudinous and politically correct posturing, wishful thinking, and reckless government.
Like most other undertakings of government, environmental protection requires a lot more than platitudes and posturing. It requires the continuous balancing of interests, attention to changing details, and compromise — the essence of democracy. So if Connecticut really wants to put the judiciary in charge of the environment, it should add another amendment to its constitution: to elect the state’s judges every two years, just like state legislators, since the judges will be the state’s new legislators.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
“The amendment is platitudinous and politically correct posturing, wishful thinking, and reckless government.”
Indeed.
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