By CHRIS POWELL
While it would be impossible politically, freezing most state government salaries for a year or two would be fair, for as Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant reported the other day, those salaries have increased by more than 30%, more than private-sector salaries have increased, since Ned Lamont became governor in 2019.
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The average state employee salary, the newspaper said, is now about $95,000, which doesn’t include the value of the gold-plated medical insurance and the armor-plated job security enjoyed by state employees.
But Lamont is a Democrat, and just as no Roman emperor dared to reduce the pay of his legions, no Democratic governor dares to reduce the pay of his party’s legions, the state employee unions. Lamont already has pledged to give the unions 4.5% raises this year, a state election year. That will be more than enough to insure that union members use some of their many paid days off to work for Democratic campaigns. This kickback is Connecticut’s biggest public campaign financing program, completely one-sided.
What’s more disgraceful is that the governor just shrugs at the many particular excesses in state government’s payroll and work rules, like the guarantee to state employees that they can work many days from home each week, a guarantee with substantial cash value since it sharply reduces employee commuting expense.
The governor says he wants state employees to come back to their offices but notes that a 2021 labor contract arbitration decision concluded that working from home is a negotiated benefit and can’t be changed without the agreement of the unions.
Of course the governor knows that the arbitration decision is not really the last word. He and the General Assembly could remove working from home as a subject of contract negotiation and reclaim for the governor the power to designate workplaces. They could even repeal binding arbitration. While such legislation might require of the governor and most legislators more respect for the public interest than they have ever summoned, at least theoretically it could be done.
Other state employment excesses recently enumerated by the Courant include state employee overtime and pensions.
Overtime long has been out of control and now is approaching $400 million per year, being worst in the Correction Department, the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the state police. Many state employees earn more in overtime than in base salary.
In 2024 about 20 made more than $200,000 in overtime, about 1,700 made more than $50,000 in OT, and about 2,600 earned more than $40,000 in OT.
Most state employees love the option to work overtime and no one in authority wants to attempt the simple management necessary to minimize it. There’s no penalty for its excessive use.
Many retired state employees now are receiving annual pensions of $200,000 or more, and as Connecticut columnist Red Jahncke has often noted, the constant raises for state employees drive up the state’s pension obligations as well, devouring most of the extra money state government lately has been putting into state pension funds to improve their solvency. The extra money really hasn’t purchased much more solvency.
The leader of the Republican minority in the state House of Representatives, Vincent Candelora of North Branford, possibly the most sensible state legislator, proposes that state pensions should be capped at $100,000 or $150,000 annually. Such an amount still would provide comfortable retirement, quite apart from personal savings and any Social Security benefits state employees had happened to earn.
“Affordability” has become the big buzzword in politics in Connecticut and nationally but it isn’t yet being applied to state government. For as H.L. Mencken wrote a century ago, if an elected official found that he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner. Since, on the whole, Connecticut’s taxpayers don’t pay much attention to state government, they remain the specialty on its menu.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 