Hartford Business Journal

24 Hartford Business Journal • July 16, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com OTHER VOICES What and who will it take to stop CT's fall? By Chris Powell P rompted by poses struck by candidates for the Republican nomination for governor, the Hartford Business Journal asked its readers recently: "Can Connecticut realistically eliminate the state income tax and produce a balanced state budget?" Two-thirds of the readers who responded answered "no." Since the in- come tax pro- duces about half of state govern- ment's revenue, of course elimi- nating it isn't realistic. A better question would have been wheth- er it is realistic even to hope that state government might reduce spending by any amount, improve efficiency, and stop raising taxes. Theoretically it is possible, despite the 10-percent budget deficit already predicted for next year. But politically? First Connecticut would need a governor and majority in the General Assembly willing to confront the state and municipal employee unions, whose members receive about half of state government's revenue. Those union members are the most politically active people in the state. The teacher unions particularly are the dominant political force in nearly every town. Some of the Republican candidates for governor have declared themselves ready to confront the state employee unions over their pensions, which remain grossly underfunded. But the teachers? It doesn't matter that during three decades Connecticut has increased local education spending by tens of billions of dollars only to establish that spending has no correlation with student performance and that student performance correlates only with par- enting. For many parents themselves are not willing to accept this, since it would shift to them the responsibility that is misplaced with schools. No candidate for governor or state legislator dares to go near this issue. So school spending will remain a black hole, absorbing ever-more money even as enrollment keeps declining. Schools likely will swallow up any money saved elsewhere in government. For 60 years Connecticut has had policies purportedly intended to reverse the decline of its cities. Three times in those years state policy has relocated downtown Hartford, first to Constitution Plaza, then to the Hartford Civic Center (now XL Cen- ter), and lately near the Connecticut Convention Center. Yet now the city is bankrupt anyway, able to operate only because of state government's assumption of its half-billion dollars in long-term debt. In most Connecticut cities, demographics, violence, schools and general living conditions have only worsened. All this is closely linked with welfare policies perpetuating and increasing dependence instead of producing self- sufficiency. The money wasted by these failures is almost beyond calculation and they cry out for audits, the first step toward correction. But such audits have not yet even been proposed by anyone in authority, for these failures have spawned big and politically influential businesses. Connecticut's Democratic Party is one of the big businesses drawing sustenance from the long failure of educational, urban, and welfare poli- cies. While the party's current leader, Gov. Malloy, is the most unpopular governor in the country, the two can- didates for the party's nomination to succeed him have pledged to continue his policies and not disturb any of government's dependents. Only something very different can have a chance of saving the state. But that will require a candidate for governor who inspires and mobilizes the people who have been paying for failure. Belonging to no special inter- est, each of these people will have to stand up seemingly alone. Do they have enough political courage? Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester. OTHER VOICES CT must break its 'steady habits' By R. Michael Goman C onnecticut is known as the "Land of Steady Habits" for good reason. Most of us will agree that economic growth is good but our commitment to it often falters when it means changes in our community. Of course, we're all familiar with the phrase "Not in my backyard," meaning that we don't want things to change in our community. Opposition to change can be viewed simply as an understandable manifestation of our past success. After all, we're financially comfort- able and, at least for now, can pay the taxes required to effectively freeze our state in time, preserving the environment we've built for ourselves. Unfortunately, when we're talking about economies, it's not realistic to think that it can be held in a state of stasis. Economies are dynamic, they're either growing or shrinking, and ours is now shrinking. It's particularly not good for those of us who have not reached that state of financial security. By trying to put our economy in neutral, we're dramatically reducing the likelihood that our young and/or lower-paid work- ers will be able to participate in the American Dream (a path of up- ward economic mobility). This is neither fair nor just. It also means we have dam- aged the ability of many of our young people to build a life for themselves in the state in which they were raised. In the past 30 years, our genera- tion, having inherited a robust and growing Connecticut economy, has managed to eliminate the growth that fueled the very economic mobility that benefitted us. The Connecticut economy we pass on to our children holds nothing like the promise it had when we inherited it from the previous generation. This is a particularly egregious consequence of putting our economy into neutral. In enacting our current byzantine system of land-use regulations, our original intent was to simply prevent the most egregious forms of devel- opment from despoiling our towns. However, like most regulatory envi- ronments, over time this system has expanded to the point where it now prevents or dramatically restricts even relatively small and benign developments. Today, this system has a chilling ef- fect on investment in Connecticut com- munities. I have repeatedly witnessed first-hand numerous projects that never made it to the application process once the company understood the time, money and risk involved in trying to get through our land-use regulations. The impact of our land-use system on our economic future is enormous. Think of the things that we cherish here in Connecticut, or that we rec- ognize as being vital to our economy, and recognize that most of what you're thinking about could not be built today. Under the current land-use regula- tory environment, neither the Heu- blein Tower in Simsbury or the Good- speed Opera House in East Haddam would ever get built, nor would Bradley International Airport or our interstate highways and bridges. Any proposal to build another interna- tional airport or another interstate highway would be tied up in the process and then in the courts for decades, and yet at the same time, we all recognize the importance of a robust and modern infra- structure to a growing, healthy economy. It's impor- tant to equate development and changes in our built envi- ronment to the economic future of our communities. When a company wants to locate or expand in a town, it's telling us that its investors have decided to put their capital to work there, and we need to see this as a good thing. It means jobs, more taxes, expan- sion of our economy. So, what does a path forward look like? Can we fix this? We'll look at that in the coming columns. R. Michael Goman is a principal of Goman + York Property Advisors LLC, an East Hartford-based real estate advisor. By trying to put our economy in neutral, we're dramatically reducing the likelihood that our young and/or lower-paid workers will be able to participate in the American Dream. Opinion & Commentary Chris Powell R. Michael Goman

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