‘Social equity’ is euphemism for patronage and redundancy

By CHRIS POWELL

Start with a false premise, dedicate a tax to it, create a bureaucracy for distribution of political patronage, put a nice name on it, and what have you got? 

Connecticut’s Social Equity Council.

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The Social Equity Council receives the revenue from Connecticut’s taxes on state-licensed sales of marijuana. The council is authorized to spend the money on projects that may remediate the damage done over the decades by the “war on drugs,” damage done disproportionately in poor and minority communities.

There was a lot of damage done there and damage still is being done there, but it wasn’t done by the “war on drugs” — criminal prosecution of drug dealers and users — as much as by the war on fathers, welfare policy that subsidized and thus encouraged childbearing outside marriage. The war on fathers impoverished countless households, depriving them of income and parenting, diminishing children’s education, demoralizing them, depriving them of work skills, and incentivizing them to try to gain a livelihood in the drug trade.

Catastrophically damaging as this was to the communities without fathers, most of the income from the drug trade was also earned in those communities. The trade was so lucrative that it never could be stamped out despite the many casualties of the “war on drugs” — the murders and other violence, convictions, and imprisonments. Even with marijuana purportedly legalized in Connecticut, the war on fathers, the “war on drugs,” and the war between drug dealers continue today, with increasing casualties because of powerful new drugs like fentanyl and the worsening demoralization of the poor by high inflation.

The Social Equity Council announced the other day that it has $36 million in marijuana tax revenue to distribute through scores of financial grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 in the 15 poor municipalities it has identified as primary casualties of the “war on drugs.”

But first the council must hire grant managers for each area, and its chief executive, former state Rep. Brandon McGee, D-Hartford, says many of the grants will be targeted for economic development, as if state government and municipal governments don’t already have economic development agencies. 

The expertise of those agencies often comes into question. So what is the economic development expertise of the Social Equity Council? Nothing in particular. 

As the council has done before, it will award grants largely as a matter of political or personal patronage in the targeted communities. There is no mechanism for evaluating the results. The council will find enterprises that seem to do good work or are connected to influential people and give them some money. Since the council has its own tax and is meant only as political patronage, the General Assembly won’t care about results.

McGee says the council also wants to help the transition of former prison inmates back into society. That is a compelling need and yet it is one in which the Correction Department and a venerable Connecticut nonprofit agency, Community Partners in Action, are already involved. Unfortunately the new state budget erased the $1.5 million grant Community Partners in Action was to receive next year. So why should the Social Equity Council be trying to reinvent the wheel here as well with economic development, except for the patronage in awarding its grants? 

Meanwhile the impoverished communities the Social Equity Council is supposed to help, including Bridgeport and Hartford, are short tens of millions of dollars for “special education” services needed by their many thousands of disadvantaged students, some of whom, if they continue to be neglected, may become the drug dealers of tomorrow. Overwhelmed by students needing “special education,” Bridgeport’s and Hartford’s schools perform so poorly that they have fallen under special supervision by the equally hapless state Education Department.  

Far more might be done for those communities by liquidating the Social Equity Council and redirecting its money to “special education.” But that would eliminate the council’s political patronage, which includes McGee’s annual salary and benefits of $236,000 and the lovely pension in sight for him down the road.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net) 

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