Chris Powell column

Democrats strive to conceal the failures of Connecticut’s juvenile justice system

By Chris Powell

Fall out of bed and kill yourself in Connecticut and your state legislators well may introduce legislation memorializing you by purporting to do something about the manner of your demise.These laws have little actual impact; mainly they aim to console the families of the victims. So Connecticut recently has enacted laws purporting to prevent “coercive” conduct by murderously bitter divorce litigants, reckless walking and driving around ice cream trucks, and kids playing with guns.

Meanwhile murders, shootings, and other crimes have been exploding in Connecticut’s cities as the social disintegration there worsens.

So, New Britain legislators, how about a memorializing law that might actually do something important? You could call it “Henryk’s Law.”

Henryk Gudelski was the New Britain man killed last month as he was struck by a stolen car said to have been driven by a 17-year-old with a long criminal record who nevertheless had been freed by the juvenile justice system, one of the many young chronic offenders Connecticut won’t punish.

Henryk’s Law would end secrecy in juvenile court, thus exacting accountability from court officers and offenders alike, and imprison chronic offenders of any age who meet a standard of incorrigibility — if not a “three strikes” law, then a 10- or 20-strikes law.

State legislators, if not yet Governor Lamont, seem embarrassed by the New Britain atrocity, but the concern of Democratic leaders in the General Assembly is mainly about how to distract from the problem.

Last week House Speaker Matt Ritter pretended the problem is that juvenile court judges called to arraign young defendants at night don’t have access to their criminal records. But such access would only facilitate a few more hours of temporary detention prior to adjudication of a juvenile’s case. It would have no bearing on a sentence.

Ritter said he found this lack of access “shocking,” as if he has been unaware of the historic secrecy of juvenile court. That secrecy may conceal a few other shocking things if the speaker ever dares to look.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney said Republican legislators are using the New Britain atrocity only to “score political points in an effort to push failed, excessively punitive policies from the ’80s and ’90s.”

In fact the Republicans haven’t proposed anything “excessively punitive.” Their ideas are tentative and timid.

Looney continued: “Republicans lost all credibility on public safety when they were silent on the U.S. Capitol insurrection, refused to fund proven urban gun violence prevention programs, and sought to defund or underfund many critical urban aid programs. Law and order is an issue for Republicans only when they can target the urban youth of our state but not when their political base tries to overthrow our democracy and kills a U.S. Capitol police officer.”

OK, Republicans are awful, but Looney’s demagoguery doesn’t address the atrocity in New Britain.

As for those “excessively punitive policies from the ’80s and’90s,” Henryk Gudelski’s survivors might not find an incorrigibility law so excessive.

Instead of distracting from the failing juvenile justice system, legislators more conscientious and less demagogic, ideological, and partisan than Looney might consider the experience recounted last week by New Britain’s police chief, Christopher W. Chute.

The chief said nine juveniles are “the worst offenders” in his city, having been arrested an average of 18 times between the ages of 12 and 17. One has been arrested 25 times on charges including assault on a police officer and evading responsibility. Another has been arrested 40 times since age 12 on charges including assaulting officers, armed robbery, burglary, and car theft.

Connecticut, Chief Chute noted, tells juvenile offenders “there are no consequences for your actions.” He added: “Most of these problems started a decade ago when the juvenile age was raised from 16 to 18.”

Indeed, two years ago Senator Looney and the General Assembly’s Democratic majority enacted a law imposing secrecy even on the trials of juveniles and young adults charged with rape and murder. Fortunately the federal courts found the law unconstitutional, but it remains a monument to the Democratic objective with juvenile justice: to conceal the expensive and even deadly failure of their policies.

—–

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut politics and government for many years.

Colleges serve only themselves; and expose juvenile courts

By Chris Powell

Enrollment at Connecticut’s community colleges has been collapsing, probably because the state’s economy is weak and most students being admitted are unprepared for higher education, having never mastered high school work but having been promoted anyway. So what are the colleges doing?

The Connecticut Examiner says that instead of cutting staff, the colleges are hiring 174 advisers to help boost enrollment and student performance.

This isn’t to benefit students as much as the colleges themselves — to preserve their jobs when the billions of dollars in emergency money from the federal government runs out and state government has more incentive to notice that the colleges are consuming a lot more than they’re producing.

The bigger danger to the colleges is that when the federal money runs out someone in state government will notice as well that Connecticut’s education problem is not higher education at all but [ITALICS] lower [END ITALICS] education — that social promotion in elementary, middle, and high school is leaving many if not most graduates unqualified for higher education and, indeed, unqualified for more than menial work, and that more spending does not produce more education generally.

Connecticut doesn’t need more college students. It needs more high school grads who deserve diplomas.

SECRECY FUELS FAILURE: Another expensive mistaken premise of government in Connecticut that needs to be questioned urgently is the secrecy of juvenile court. Even some Democratic state legislators seem to be nervous about the atrocity in New Britain June 29, when a jogger was struck and killed by a stolen car said to have been driven by a 17-year-old who already had a long and serious criminal record but was free anyway.

The premise for secrecy in juvenile court is that young people should not suffer any stigma for their criminal misconduct. Unfortunately young criminals now see that this means that society has lost the self-respect to punish them for anything they do, especially car theft for joyriding — hence the explosion of that crime lately.

In addition to encouraging juvenile crime, this mistaken premise prevents any accountability in the juvenile justice system. For example, in the New Britain atrocity, while police itemized the 13 offenses with which the defendant already had been charged in the last four years, journalism and the public are unable to examine the details of those cases and how they were handled by prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, and social workers.

Who failed to lock up a chronic offender? Who failed to rehabilitate him? Such knowledge is prohibited.

This secrecy doesn’t serve the public. Since there are now so many repeat juvenile offenders, on top of so many repeat adult offenders, the whole juvenile justice system is failing, providing neither deterrence or rehabilitation, so the secrecy isn’t serving even the young offenders it is supposed to protect.

Instead secrecy here serves only the juvenile justice system’s employees and associates, insulating them from any accountability. They can’t be identified any more than the young offenders themselves.

But lately the Democratic Party’s position on juvenile crime in Connecticut has been to increase secrecy. The Democratic majority in the General Assembly and Governor Lamont enacted a law to impose secrecy even on trials for juveniles and young adults charged with rape and murder. Fortunately the law was quickly ruled unconstitutional by federal courts.

Connecticut Democrats are devoted to maximizing government’s scope and employment, and the failure of the juvenile justice system exposes their objective: for every child to have his own special-education teacher, therapist, social worker, police officer, and probation officer — but no parents.

SCHOOL POWER LIMITED: At least the U.S. Supreme Court reduced the scope of government the other day. The court ruled that a public school in Pennsylvania did not have the authority to punish a student for vulgar speech outside school — that her First Amendment rights prevail outside school, even if she insults her school itself.

Of course this doesn’t make the student a nice person or justify the tirade for which she was punished. It just confines a school’s authority to a student’s conduct in school. Police and parents — for those kids who have any — can take it from there.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

Colleges serve only themselves; and expose juvenile courts

By Chris Powell

The Connecticut Examiner says that instead of cutting staff, the colleges are hiring 174 advisers to help boost enrollment and student performance.

The bigger danger to the colleges is that when the federal money runs out someone in state government will notice as well that Connecticut’s education problem is not higher education at all but lower education — that social promotion in elementary, middle, and high school is leaving many if not most graduates unqualified for higher education and, indeed, unqualified for more than menial work, and that more spending does not produce more education generally.

Connecticut doesn’t need more college students. It needs more high school grads who deserve diplomas.

Who failed to lock up a chronic offender? Who failed to rehabilitate him? Such knowledge is prohibited.

This secrecy doesn’t serve the public. Since there are now so many repeat juvenile offenders, on top of so many repeat adult offenders, the whole juvenile justice system is failing, providing neither deterrence nor rehabilitation, so the secrecy isn’t serving even the young offenders it is supposed to protect.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

A Connecticut town skips the ‘flag wars’; and what’s the ‘pride’ of sex?

By Chris Powell

Suffield has opted out of what First Selectwoman Melissa Mack calls the “flag wars,” which are being fought over attempts to use government flagpoles for proselytizing or propaganda by non-government groups.

The town’s Board of Selectmen voted 3-1 last month to reserve town government flagpoles for government’s own flags, denying a request to fly the “rainbow” or “pride” flag celebrating sexual minorities. The board felt that everyone is welcome in Suffield but realized that flying non-government flags would require the board to endorse or reject particular groups, to play favorites, and thus risk unnecessary controversy.

Of course the meaning of non-government flags isn’t always clear.

Does the “pride” flag mean only “live and let live,” or does it also mean that men who identify as women should be able to use women’s rest rooms and participate in women’s athletic competitions?

Does the Black Lives Matter flag mean equal rights and respect for Black people, or does it also mean “defunding” or even eliminating the police?

Does the peace sign flag mean ending stupid imperial wars, or does it mean unilateral disarmament as well?

Of course the country could argue forever about the positions expressed or implied by such flags. Better to reserve government flagpoles for flags that represent a whole town, a whole state, or the whole country, and let the interest groups proselytize and propagandize elsewhere.

* * *

FALSE PRIDE: While people should not have to conceal their sexual orientation, and while the law long has conferred sexual freedom on everyone, it is a little strange that sexual orientation should be claimed as a source of “pride.” Something that, like sexual orientation, is natural and inherent or a mere personal preference is hardly earned or an achievement. While even now acknowledging one’s sexual orientation may take some courage, if not as much in Connecticut and other socially liberal states anymore, courage and pride are different things.

Dictionaries define pride as “inordinate self-esteem.” Informally the word is often used just to signify something that people are glad about or satisfied with, but in biblical terms pride is plainly to be avoided, since Proverbs says it “goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Given the disparagement and persecution suffered by sexual minorities in the past, it may be understandable for some of them now to want to strut or thumb their nose in society’s face, though society hardly cares about people’s sex lives, except for celebrities.

Since most people today have bigger concerns, the more they hear about “pride” in sexual orientation, the more they may be reminded that what was, in the last century, “the love that dares not speak its name,” cannot, in this century, shut up.

* * *

COLLEGE POLITICS: Manchester Community College is producing trivial infighting worthy of the snootiest Ivy League university.

Last month the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system was about to fire MCC’s chief executive in secret, without giving a reason. So she hired lawyers to go public with objections and mobilized her supporters to praise her, whereupon the firing was stalled. Even so, the college system’s spokeswoman refused to explain what was going on, saying it was a “personnel matter” — the stupidest non-sequitur in government, since nearly everything in government is a personnel matter and no law forbids explaining. The “personnel matter” dodge is a proclamation of unaccountability.

Then the college system issued a report saying MCC is wracked by racial tension. But the report could cite little more than supposed “microaggressions” against minority employees and the open questioning by colleagues of the credentials of two Black women being promoted. So even in this age of “affirmative action” — racial preferences that inevitably impugn hiring and promotions — questioning the credentials of Black government employees is apparently unconstitutional, or at least a hate crime.

It all evokes the wry reflection by the Pulitizer Prize-winning historian, author, and Trinity College English professor Odell Shepard, who served a term as Connecticut’s lieutenant governor in the 1940s. Shepard said he had seen politics at the state Capitol and politics in the academy, and politics in the academy was far more cutthroat.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

With taxes in Connecticut, ‘fair’ always means ‘more’

By Chris Powell

.So much in government in Connecticut is euphemism. Political patronage is called “equity” and “social justice.” Increasing the compensation of teachers is “aid to education.” Raising gasoline taxes is a “climate initiative.”

And now the new state budget, at the instigation of the House chairman of the General Assembly’s finance committee, Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, is directing the Lamont administration to undertake another study of how “fair” Connecticut’s tax system is.

“Fair” is almost sure to be defined again as something that raises more money for state government. That is the only possible purpose for such a study, since the basics of tax incidence — which groups pay how much — long have been clearly established.

But contrary to the assumption made for the new study, the definition of fairness in taxation is highly arguable.

Lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income in state and municipal taxes than higher-income people do. But this calculation omits federal taxes, where people with higher wages pay far higher percentages. (Investment income is something else.)

State sales and gas taxes and municipal property taxes can be construed as regressive — more burdensome for lower-income people — insofar as their rates are the same for everybody. But these taxes also can be construed as progressive, with wealthier people paying more than poorer people despite identical tax rates, since wealthier people buy more stuff, have larger homes and more expensive cars, and drive more for travel and pleasure.

Additionally, tax incidence studies don’t always take into account government benefits for lower-income people, like subsidies for medical insurance, housing, food, and child care.

Apart from percentages of income paid in taxes, in simple dollar terms higher-income people pay far more in state and local taxes than poor people do, and they use far less in government services. That’s why Connecticut’s cities are so eager to export their poor.

And while burdening the poor with taxes is easily portrayed as unfair, the less people pay in taxes and the more they receive in government services, the less they feel the burden of government and the less responsibility they take for it. No amount of waste, fraud, and ineffectiveness in government ever bothers advocates of higher taxes like Connecticut Voices for Children or the government employee unions.

Indeed, such advocates are never bothered even by the manifest failure of major government enterprises to accomplish their nominal objectives. Spending in the name of education increases as student enrollment and performance decline. Spending in the name of social welfare increases as poverty and dependence worsen. Spending in the name of rehabilitating the cities increases as living conditions there deteriorate.

So whatever fairness is, what is fair about claiming more revenue for state and municipal government when there are never audits of the performance of its most expensive undertakings, since audits would expose failure?

Yes, the federal tax code is full of provisions that diminish the progressivity of the federal income tax, especially now that the government is propping up the stock market. But ironically, liberal Democrats in Connecticut and other high-tax states want to repeal the big progressive change made to the federal tax code by the recent Republican majorities in Congress: the $10,000 cap on state and municipal tax deductions from the federal income tax.

It’s the federal tax system, not the state and municipal tax system, that needs more progressivity. With a weak economy and taxpayers leaving, Connecticut needs tax restraint, especially since “fair” in taxation here is just a euphemism for “more.”

* * *

BRADLEY’S ‘SUBSIDY’: Last month this column asserted that Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks is “subsidized” by state government. This might have misled.

The airport is a state government operation, run by the Connecticut Airport Authority, but it does not bill state government for its costs. Rather, the authority finances Bradley’s operations from its own revenue streams, including airline landing fees, parking charges, and commercial rents. The authority’s general-aviation airports are also supported by aviation fuel taxes, which state and federal regulations require to be used for the state’s aviation system.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

Might Connecticut care more about crime than politically correct trivia?

By Chris Powell

Lately the Lamont administration has boasted about closing prisons in Connecticut even as crime has exploded. Of course the crime wave isn’t exclusive to this state. But those in charge seem to think that since the explosion in crime can’t be blamed on Donald Trump, it can be largely ignored.

So those in charge should consider the recent primary elections for mayor of New York City, where standards of political correctness are set.

It was no surprise that Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels crime watch group, won the Republican nomination, since Republicans encompass the law-and-order crowd. But there was some surprise in the apparent victory in the Democratic primary of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, a former state senator and police captain.

Ranked-choice votes still have to be tabulated, but Adams, who is Black, assembled a coalition of working-class voters from all ethnic groups and boroughs in support of a law-and-order platform. His main point is that public safety is the prerequisite of prosperity.

Could even New York City Democrats care more about public safety than politically correct nonsense like “critical race theory” and transgenderism? And if New York City Democrats can, could voters in Connecticut?

In any case Connecticut is full of criminal cases that should become political issues. The public increasingly sees, even as state government denies, that there is a scandal in the growing number of car thefts and other crimes being committed by teens and young men who know they will never be punished. The General Assembly keeps refusing to reinstate deterrence.

So last week the 25-year-old suspect in a double shooting in Hartford in which one victim was killed was presented in court and charged with murder. It was the city’s 20th murder of the year, against 25 all last year. News reports said that the defendant had been awaiting prosecution on at least five previous charges.

This week two teens who had been living in a group home broke into and ransacked the senior citizens center in Wolcott. Stealing a car nearby, they crashed into two parked cars and then a utility pole, totaling the stolen car, before being caught. They laughed as police booked them. A judge quickly ordered them released, but after public protests they were put in detention.

And then a man jogging on a sidewalk in New Britain was struck and killed by a car stolen in Hartford. Surveillance video showed two teens running away from the scene. New Britain police located one hiding in a closet at his home and charged him with first-degree assault, reckless driving, and car theft. Though he is only 17, police said, he has been arrested 13 times in the last four years on charges including assault with a knife, narcotics possession, reckless driving, evading responsibility, car theft, and robbery. Still, he was free.

This week Governor Lamont weakly responded to the crime wave by proposing to spend $5 million more on crime detection. But the problem isn’t detection at all but what government does with the criminals it already has detected and apprehended.

Of course prisons aren’t very good at rehabilitation. But then nothing is, and at least prisons are good at incapacitating the unrehabilitated until those in charge discover something in criminal justice that does more than strike a politically correct pose, and until they get even more relevant by asking:

Where are all the messed-up kids coming from?

* * *

AVOID WEED, GOVERNOR: Connecticut may hope that Governor Lamont was just joking the other day when asked if, now that the state is legalizing marijuana, he would smoke some. “Time will tell,” the governor replied. “Not right now but we’ll see.”

Yes, drug criminalization has been a failure, but despite Connecticut’s new law, marijuana is still prohibited by federal law, and the dignity of his office obliges the governor to obey it.

So does politics. For as a Democrat the governor already has sewn up the stoner vote, and he and his party will fare better if smoking dope can’t be used to explain their raising gas taxes and coddling young criminals.

Besides, Connecticut offers much more compelling opportunities for civil disobedience. Why not try, say, buying alcoholic beverages below state-minimum prices or patronizing an unlicensed hypnotist?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

How long will Governor Lamont hold the line on Connecticut’s taxes?

By Chris Powell

For months the far-left faction of the Democratic caucuses in the General Assembly, which controlled the legislature this year, sought to raise taxes all over the place and especially on the wealthy and business. The party’s leader, Governor Lamont — while derided by lefties as a blue-blooded business magnate — is usually pretty leftist himself, at least with the politically correct posturing, but he blocked those tax increases, since state government is rolling in emergency federal money.

Last week the governor got some vindication as he announced three major business arrivals for Connecticut.

Tobacco company Philip Morris International, which claims to be evolving from tobacco to electronic cigarettes, said it will move its headquarters from New York City to a site in Fairfield County yet to be selected, bringing 200 jobs. For once a business is coming to Connecticut without getting a bribe from state government.

Cigarettes are not the most noble business, but at the behest of the far-left Democrats in the legislature Connecticut is not just purporting to legalize marijuana, contrary to federal law, but also getting into the business itself with licensing, regulation, and, of course, taxing. Also at the behest of the far-left Democrats, state government is legalizing and entering the sports betting business in the same hope of making a lot of money.

Since marijuana and gambling aren’t the most noble businesses either, nobody in Connecticut should be sneering at Philip Morris.

The company will pay its business and property taxes and its employees will pay their income taxes, and, since most of them are highly paid, their income taxes will be greater than the taxes paid by those who clamor for higher taxes in the name of “equity.”

The second business arrival announced by the governor last week was that of financial technology company iCapital, which will open an office in Greenwich, bringing as many as 200 jobs, also likely to be high-paying. If the company achieves the planned level of employment in two years, it will qualify for $2.94 million in subsidies from state government. Such bribes are always objectionable but iCapital’s will amount to less than $15,000 per job even as state government often has paid far more.

The third business arrival announced by the governor last week was that of ITT Inc., which will move its headquarters from White Plains, New York, to Stamford, bringing 57 jobs for a bribe of $2 million, or $35,000 per job.

Those subsidies are awful but would Philip Morris, iCapital, and ITT be coming to Connecticut if the far-left Democrats had gotten their way on taxes a few weeks ago? That’s unlikely. The companies still are taking a big chance by coming to Connecticut, since state government’s huge chronic deficits will reappear when the emergency federal money expires in two years and state government’s grossly underfunded pension obligations remain burdensome.

If a Republican is elected governor in 2022, new taxes probably will be avoided. If Lamont is re-elected, the far left in his party will press him hard again to raise taxes, and as the federal money runs out, resisting the far left won’t be as easy for him.

But Connecticut’s Republicans share the blame for the state’s high taxes and weak economy.

For the Republicans have not been very good at articulating the big policy choices. While proposing alternatives risks controversy, the state can’t be restored without it.

And too many Connecticut Republicans have stuck with former President Donald Trump, who, while often right about policy, was almost always appalling in his demeanor. Last year Trumpism demolished what had been the growing Republican strength in the General Assembly, as Republicans were defeated even in Republican districts. At least with Democratic state Sen. Alex Kasser resigning last week, her Greenwich-based district likely will return a Republican to the Senate in a special election soon — if Trump can stay out of the campaign.

Trump won’t be on the ballot during the state election next year but Connecticut Democrats will run against him all the same. For Trumpism is never going to carry the state. But a Republican platform might gain some votes — if Connecticut Republicans can even remember what a platform is.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

Discipline for police in Connecticut fails amid secrecy and union clout

By Chris Powell

Connecticut’s most important journalism last week was the study produced by Bill Cummings of the Hearst newspapers about the weakness and secrecy in discipline of misconduct by municipal police officers in Fairfield and New Haven counties.

While police are far more sinned against than sinning, sensational cases of misconduct, however unrepresentative, heighten the need for accountability, especially since police departments are in charge of policing themselves, at least until a lawsuit is brought in court.

Perhaps what was most inexcusable in what the Hearst report found was the refusal of many police departments to disclose disciplinary records in a timely way under Connecticut’s freedom-of-information law.

But in government in Connecticut the lack of discipline is hardly peculiar to police. State government is notorious for being unable to fire anyone for almost anything, since union contracts and the state Board of Mediation and Arbitration ensure that most discipline is trivial. In municipal government most employees are teachers, and once they achieve tenure under state law, dismissing one can prove prohibitively expensive no matter the justification.

Since the public is generally uninformed and indifferent, most elected officials in Connecticut become tools of the government employee unions. Indeed, the General Assembly and Governor Lamont have just enacted legislation to let the state employee unions interfere with even more of ordinary management, inviting the unions into management’s own orientation meetings with new hires. The public interest only loses from that.

Until police brutality recently became a national issue, Connecticut state government even accepted a state police union contract that lets troopers block disclosure of complaints against them. A new law forbids such contract provisions but it may not be enforceable until the next contract takes effect. State university professors enjoy a similar contract provision.

Mandatory publicity may be the only way of improving discipline not just for police officers but for all government employees in Connecticut. The law could require state and municipal agencies to post on their internet sites all complaints and disciplinary records involving their employees. While some complaints will be false or exaggerated, as long as government agencies are their own investigators and can conceal even valid complaints, the public will have little protection.

Of course there is no chance of such a reform until the public is even half as mobilized as the unions are. But now that Black people are realizing that government secrecy and capitulation to the unions facilitates abuse, maybe some white people can catch on.

CHOO-CHOO WHO?: If they had some ham, cheese, bread, and maybe a little mustard, Governor Lamont and state Transportation Commissioner Joseph Giulietti could have a ham sandwich. And, they said at a press conference last week at the railroad station in Stratford, they could shave 10 minutes off a Metro-North train ride from New Haven to Grand Central Station in New York City in a year or so and as much as 25 minutes in 14 years if they had a gift of as much as $10 billion from the federal government — and if, of course, anyone still wanted to go.

Lately most New York traffic has been in the other direction — that is, outbound from the city. That may change as the virus epidemic recedes and New York’s disastrous mayor, Bill DeBlasio, is replaced. But most of what constituted the railroad traffic before the epidemic — Connecticut residents spending as much as four hours a day commuting to and from work in the city — may not return now that working from home is popular.

No matter, perhaps, since Connecticut U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, where money is no longer any object, attended the press conference in Stratford and promised to help get those billions for the railroad.

Amid such enthusiasm and pipe dream smoke it seemed impolite to ask whether hastening commutes to Grand Central by 25 minutes 14 years from now is more important than, say, repairing the state’s deficient roads and bridges, the fund for which is running dry, the governor and legislature unable to agree on methods of replenishing it. So nobody asked.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

Legislative leaders exterminate their own rat; and state finances exclusion of housing

By Chris Powell

Did someone try to get the General Assembly to pass a gasoline tax increase last week without the knowledge of the public and most legislators themselves?

It sure looked that way. The 800-page bill “implementing” the new state budget carried a strange provision authorizing state government department heads to make contracts with other states.

That might have been construed to enable the commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to put Connecticut into the Transportation Climate Initiative, which would increase the state’s gas taxes by as much as 15 cents per gallon in the name of diminishing carbon emissions and raising money for transportation infrastructure.

Governor Lamont favored the program but a majority of legislators could not be persuaded to vote for raising gas taxes any more than a majority can be persuaded to impose highway tolls — at least not while people are watching.

But the “implementer” always shows up at adjournment of the legislature’s regular session or in a special session soon afterward when legislators are tired and rushed. The “implementer” is long and complicated, and only the legislature’s top leaders and the governor and their staffs put it together. With hardly anyone watching, it is often stuffed with disreputable provisions called “rats.”

Exactly where did the contract-making provision come from? Nobody knows, because Senate President Martin Looney, House Speaker Matt Ritter, and the governor aren’t telling, though this “rat” could not have made the “implementer” without their approval.

So after the Yankee Institute and some Republican legislators spotted the “rat” and publicized it just before the state House of Representatives was to vote on the “implementer,” the House saw a wonderful irony. Speaker Ritter and the House Democratic majority leader, Rep. Jason Rojas, made the motion to remove the contract-making provision from the bill — even as they had approved it in the first place.

The “rat” was removed and now maybe the embarrassment to Ritter and Rojas will be a reminder to ordinary legislators to keep a closer watch on their sneaky leaders — and a reminder to the press and public to keep a closer watch on the whole bunch.

* * *

Predictably enough, nothing came of the clamor directed at the legislature this year about the exclusive zoning practices of many suburbs, even though the data was overwhelming, the clamor came from Democrats, and Democrats dominate the legislature.

But suburban Democratic legislators won’t touch zoning while welfare and education policies keep manufacturing poverty in the cities and scaring suburbanites about the potential occupants of inexpensive housing in their towns.

So everything was back to normal last week as Governor Lamont, also a Democrat, announced grants of $5.5 million to 27 towns, most of them suburbs, in the name of preserving “open space” in places that already have a lot of “open space” but little inexpensive housing. Those grants will make sure there is even less land available for inexpensive housing in the suburbs.

* * *

SMELL THE ‘EQUITY’: Juneteenth, now a federal holiday, is perfect for the phony “woke” era — posturing based on a false premise and distracting from rather than alleviating inequality.

Contrary to the claim made for it, Juneteenth does not mark the end of slavery in the United States in June 1865, since slavery continued for another six months until ratification of the 13th Amendment. As a federal holiday now Juneteenth will just patronize Black people while doing nothing about the disintegration of the cities most of them live in.

Juneteenth tells them: “Are your children without fathers? Are they not being well educated? Are you getting shot at or drug-addled? Are you stuck in a cycle of poverty? Is your rent going up but not your income? Then let’s have a party and give government employees another paid day off. They’ll be sure to attend!”

Indeed, the cost of paying federal employees not to work on Juneteenth is estimated at $600 million. As Juneteenth becomes a state holiday, it will cost government far more. Unfortunately its political correctness does not extend to funding Juneteenth by repealing Columbus Day.

Can’t you smell the “social justice” and “equity” already?

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.

Tweed and zoning controversies suggest a new motto for state

By Chris Powell

Municipal zoning that controversially excludes inexpensive housing in the suburbs isn’t the only area where Connecticut long has allowed the local interest to thwart the broader public interest. That is also the story of Tweed-New Haven Airport.

The governor, business leaders, and most residents in the New Haven area who pay any attention favor improving Tweed so that people in the southern part of the state don’t have to drive an hour or two to catch a flight that might not take even that long. The New Haven area, with plenty of commerce, industry, and universities, including Yale, almost surely could support a real airport of its own, and such an airport would support the area’s economic growth.

But since 2009 Connecticut actually has made it illegal to improve Tweed. That’s when state legislators representing neighborhoods near the airport persuaded the General Assembly and Gov. Jodi Rell to enact a law forbidding the extension of the airport’s runway beyond the current 5,600 feet even as a 7,000-foot runway is necessary to accommodate modern jetliners with enough seating to make serving the airport profitable.

Two years ago a federal appeals court found this state law contrary to federal law and invalidated it. But no matter how obvious the benefit of improving Tweed was, Connecticut still didn’t repeal the law. At least now state government, New Haven city government, and town government in East Haven, where some airport property is located, are working together not just to extend the runway but also to build a better terminal building and relocate airport access to the East Haven side.

The details of the plan may be arguable. Airport operator Avports will get a 43-year lease on Tweed and commit to spending millions of dollars improving it. The Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority, which is run by a board consisting of local residents, will lose control of the airport, but New Haven won’t have to subsidize it anymore. Avports will solicit more flights to serve Tweed, for which the prospects are good, and a new budget airline is already planning to come in, though of course it may not survive long.

There may be stumbles and a “temporary” subsidy eventually might be sought from state government. Someday Tweed might even be taken over by the Connecticut Airport Authority. But state government already subsidizes the state’s major airport, Bradley International in Windsor Locks, and nobody complains about that, given the airport’s huge contribution to Connecticut’s economy and quality of life.

Tweed has been operating for 90 years, so no one living nearby can be surprised by the desire to improve it to keep up with population and economic growth. What might be surprising to people unfamiliar with Connecticut is that it has taken the state so long to get around to making Tweed really useful.

But then if a referendum on the state motto was ever called, no one in Connecticut could be surprised if Qui transtulit sustinet was replaced by Non in me postica — “Not in my back yard.”

* * *

OH, THE OPPRESSION: Just think of how comprehensively racist the country must be if, as the incessant racial prattle complains, requiring people to present photo identification when voting is racist.

For people routinely may be required to produce photo identification when, among other things, buying alcoholic beverages and tobacco products; when applying for a job, a bank account, a car loan, or home mortgage; and when boarding an airplane or entering a casino.

The purpose of requiring photo identification in those circumstances is simple: compliance with the law and prevention of fraud. Those are the same purposes for which presentation of photo identification when voting should be required.

Yes, some poor souls don’t have photo identification, but most jurisdictions will provide general all-purpose photo IDs to people who can produce at least their birth certificates and evidence of an address.

Indeed, to facilitate violation of federal immigration law, Connecticut will provide driver’s licenses and New Haven city government will provide city identification cards even to immigration lawbreakers.

Having to prove one’s identification isn’t racist at all. It’s a small duty of modern citizenship.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.