No Connecticut governor has faced as big a challenge as Ned Lamont faces since Abraham Ribicoff, who managed the state’s recovery from the flooding of August 1955 in which 87 people were killed and more than $2 billion of damage in today’s dollars was done.
At least Ribicoff quickly saw the end of the disaster as the sun came out and repairs began immediately. But no one knows when today’s coronavirus epidemic will end and how much damage remains to be done. Each day now is a frantic race of making do for government and hospitals.
Lamont is not a loud, self-indulgent, snarly, and surly showman like his colleague, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. Instead Lamont is trying to maintain a difficult balance -— trying to contain the virus with social and commerce restrictions without driving people crazy and insolvent, and to obtain federal resources while responding calmly to the nuttiness and imperiousness occasionally exploding from the White House, like President Trump’s remark Saturday about quarantining the New York metropolitan area.
People in Connecticut can perceive that nuttiness and imperiousness on their own and really don’t need Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy making almost daily denunciations of Trump that put the state’s federal aid at risk. There will be plenty of time before the November election to remind people of the president’s demeanor. The urgent need is to calm him down and try to help him succeed, hard as that may be.
While physically slight, unassuming, and sometimes aloof, Lamont now is clothed with great power, having invoked Section 28-9 of the Connecticut General Statutes, which authorizes him to suspend any state laws for as long as six months at a time and commandeer all resources in the state, public and private, just as if he were a military commander defending against invasion. The governor is now more than captain general of the state militia, as the state Constitution makes him. He is captain general of all Connecticut itself.
But his decrees have been well-considered, reached through consultation, rather mild, revised quickly as necessary, and generally understood and accepted. He has persuaded and hectored but not bullied. People who foolishly still gather in crowds may need to be bullied or even arrested eventually, but most people already know better.
The governor has recruited retired doctors and nurses to return to work. New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker is recruiting a Medical Reserve Corps for his city, and the governor might do well to recruit general auxiliaries based on each hospital.
As Lamont notes in a new public service video, Connecticut is full of people ready to help.
The governor also should coordinate the sharing of resources and information among hospitals. They should report to his office the successful and unsuccessful therapies they are using with the virus and that information should be shared widely. Indeed, last week Connecticut’s Hearst newspapers actually reported the therapeutic cure of a Wilton man with a combination of two medicines, but this has yet to be publicized and acted upon as it should be.
Yet to be addressed by the governor is the threat of a virus outbreak in the state’s prisons. Temporary parole should be offered to less dangerous prisoners who can live with their families, but where would the others go, how would they support themselves, and how could they be supervised? If prisoners were required to watch some of the panic-inducing national television news broadcasts about the virus, they might want to stay put.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
