By Chris Powell
Last weekend Governor Lamont took an oath that was more politically consequential than the one he took to assume office after his elections as governor in 2018 and 2022.
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The Yankee Institute’s indispensable Meghan Portfolio reports that it happened during the convention of Connecticut state employee unions in Groton, where the governor pledged: “Every year that I’ve been here you’ve gotten a raise, and every year I’m here, you’re going to get a raise.”
So now presumably the state employees don’t have to worry about things like nuclear war, enemy invasion, plagues, earthquakes, Donald Trump, or hidden taxes on electricity that drive half of Connecticut’s population to other states.
Private-sector workers may lose income because of such disasters, and state budgets may continue to neglect the neediest in many ways, but state employees in Connecticut will get their raises. The governor has promised to take care of them ahead of everyone else. No one else has gotten financial guarantees from him.
Campaigning for re-election as governor in April 2014, Lamont’s predecessor, Dannel P. Malloy, also a Democrat, made a similar pledge at a state employee union rally. “I am your servant,” Malloy declared.
Of course in return Democratic governors expect the approximately 46,000 state employees and their unions to take care of them and the Democratic Party in the state election next year, as they have taken care of the Democrats in many elections past. Guaranteed raises for state employees are Connecticut’s one-sided system of government financing of political campaigns. The state administration gives the state employees more money and in return they campaign to keep the Democratic regime in power.
This is just how politics worked in ancient Rome. Once the republic turned into an empire, the emperor took care of the legions first, last, and always. The peasants might starve but the imperial treasury’s primary purpose was always to sustain the forces necessary to put down rebellion. At the state employee union convention last weekend Emperor Ned promised more money to his legions and took their salute.
This is not quite how Lincoln imagined government at Gettysburg. Instead it is government of the state employees, by the state employees, and for the state employees, being delivered by the political party that, with supreme irony, lately has been prattling about “saving democracy” — the party that already has saddled Connecticut with binding arbitration for government employee union contracts, the minimum spending requirement for public schools, and tenure for teachers and secrecy for their performance evaluations, policies that obstruct democratic administration of government and transfer control of the government to the government class.
WHENCE THE DISTURBED KIDS?: Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers were puzzled the other day by what seemed to them as state government’s failure to prohibit schools from using restraint and seclusion on students who have psychotic breakdowns. When all else fails those students may be confined in padded and locked rooms — “rubber rooms” — until they calm down. Such breakdowns seem to be increasing as part of Connecticut’s general social disintegration.
Parents of such disturbed children say restraining and secluding them during their breakdowns traumatizes them and is unnecessary. But the parents suggest no alternatives except special schools that are part mental hospitals, which school systems can’t afford.
Without restraint and seclusion school administrators and teachers don’t know how they can maintain order. Indeed, having nearly abandoned behavioral and academic standards for all students, Connecticut’s schools barely are keeping order quite apart from the students suffering psychotic breakdowns.
Regular schools shouldn’t become mental hospitals. They should concentrate on education, and all distractions should be removed.
Maybe Connecticut needs two or three special residential hospital schools for seriously disturbed children. Their emotionally tortured and exhausted parents can’t be expected to take full responsibility for them.
But more important than figuring out where to place the disturbed children is figuring out why they are increasing in numbers. If the cause was believed to be some virus or germ, government would be awarding billions of dollars in research contracts to universities and drug companies. But mental illness and child neglect seem to be getting a pass. Until that changes, schools and their disturbed students will be stuck with “rubber rooms.”
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
Does the tail wag the dog in all the other states?
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