Posted on 05/01/2003 5:40:55 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
Connecticut couldn't be in much worse of a mess. Despite income tax increases and the manipulation of state budget accounts last year, state government's finances continue to collapse and the deficit grows. While the General Assembly seems ready to outlaw smoking in bars and restaurants and otherwise meddle in everybody else's business, most legislators remain in denial about their own, and a large minority is eager to repeal the state Constitution's limit on spending or to drill more holes in it. And now Governor Rowland seems incapacitated by scandal.
The governor's former deputy chief of staff has pleaded guilty to unspecified federal bribery charges involving the award of state contracts. The governor himself has admitted using a Republican Party credit card for personal expenses but refuses to explain the scope of his conduct or the possible consequences to himself under tax law and ethics regulations. His musings the other day about seeking a fourth term, after having forsworn the possibility last year, struck even his friends as a pathetic gesture at regaining relevance, and prompted only mockery from his enemies, not new respect.
While Rowland has presented the legislature with a tight budget including a few structural reforms, he has done little to support them and they are being ignored. He seems willing to react to whatever the legislature does, whenever it does, if ever it does.
What's Connecticut to do?
The likely path of least resistance was sketched out the other day by House Speaker Moira Lyons, who suggested raising the sales tax by a half point to 6.5 percent. Tax-hungrier Democrats are talking about taking the sales tax to seven percent if they can't get the governor to approve another increase in income taxes.
When the income tax was enacted in 1991 its great rationale was "tax reform," a profound reorientation of Connecticut's tax system toward profitability and wealth and away from mere transactions, like sales. The spending limit amendment to the state Constitution was offered to the voters at referendum a year later as a promise that the profligacy of state government in the 1980s wouldn't happen again.
The income tax raised a huge amount of new money and a little of it was returned to the taxpayers by reducing the sales tax from 8.5 percent to 6 percent, which was still steep. But the income tax quickly facilitated another explosion in state spending and bonding in the 1990s, elected officials quickly forgot that good times don't last forever and that tax revenue fluctuates with economic cycles, and now state government has managed to outrun the income tax just as it outran the sales tax.
So Connecticut may go back to a heavy sales tax system and plunk it on top of its heavy income tax system. And though suggestions of corruption abound, on top of expensive failures of ordinary public administration, from the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority to the Department of Children and Families to drug criminalization to government labor relations, there is no impetus in state government for stepping back to inquire whether anything should be done differently, or maybe not done at all.
Republican legislators can't think of much to do besides pledge their refusal to repeal the spending cap. Insofar as there is any leadership in the Democratic majority in the legislature, it is all for raising taxes. And the several Democratic state constitutional officers who are considered possible candidates for governor in 2004 -- Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, and Comptroller Nancy Wyman -- have nothing to say about Connecticut's dire circumstances, nothing to say even about the Rowland administration's corruption, which would be an easy target if only for partisan purposes. The leading Democrats apparently do not yet see any reason to lead.
Not that it would be such a disaster if the governor held out against the minimum tax increase legislative Democrats would settle for and a long stalemate on the budget developed. In that case more authority over spending would default to the governor. Instead of trying to whip legislators and the public into submission by closing state parks in the heat of summer, as his predecessor did, Rowland should try closing things the public would never miss, like the Education Department and the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. Even in hard times state government is still full of such stuff.
(Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)
A dime per square foot! Of the entire state.
Really, would all hell break loose if we only spent 0.07 per Square Foot?
You got that right! I can't tell you how hard I tried to keep him out of office because I knew the income tax was coming if he did. Citizens of CT, you got what you voted for and what you deserved. I'm glad I moved.
Fortunately, the state legislature realizes that it would be overturned via the initiative process if they try to shove an income tax down our throats.
True, Connecticut is only about 110 miles wide at I-95, and it is probably 80 miles from the shore to the top of the state. However, it's a short drive to even worse states. NY state taxes are a lot higher than Connecticut's, especially if you consider property taxes, which are a lot higher in Westchester County than Fairfield County. Massachusetts on the north? Mass isn't known for being a low tax state. And to the east, you've got Rhode Island. Also not a tax haven.
CT does have low property taxes, at least in the right towns. My house is worth at least $500K, and I pay property taxes of only $3100 per year in Greenwich.
We've considered it lately, believe me. As I said on that thread about Pataki and New York's huge fiscal woes, those lower-tax RED STATES have really been starting to look good to me lately!
Thanks for the ping.
Wow !!! Never expected that to happen when they shoved the income tax down our throats < /sarcasm >
What I've been wondering is where all the revenue generated by the casinos is going? What economic geniuses we have running this state, rasing taxes through the roof during an economic downturn. Has it occured to our RINO governer that revenue is down because unemployment is up?
Lowell also got confronted at the State Capitol and was spat upon by an angry mob when he showed his face, albeit very briefly. He had no idea the wrath he would face as he tried to shout down the mob of us that were there that day.
That said, the real culprit for the income tax passing was a Republican State Senator by the name of Marie Herbst, who cast THE deciding vote. All of these things you see being proposed were supposedly "safeguards" which she insisted upon being in place so Lowell and the Democrats would get her vote.
I spoke with Marie Herbst and told her she was an absolute fool for thinking that any safeguard would stand through a budget deficit brought on by wanton spending of "windfall" tax receipts and a downturn in the state's economy.
When she insisted upon defending her vote to enact the income tax because there were safeguards to make sure that runaway spending and future increases would not happen, I went door-to-door in her neighborhood and her town telling people what an idiot we had for a state senator.
She was soundly defeated in the next election.
That said, I am thankful that I live within five minutes of gas stations in Massachusetts where gasoline is 10 cents a gallon cheaper because Connecticut already has the one of the highest gasoline taxes in the nation. I also do shopping in Massachusetts where sales tax is 5%.
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