State’s economic disaster only worse for being bipartisan

Maybe every governor thinks he’s going to be different. Certainly Gov. Dannel Malloy did during his campaign two years ago and his first few months in office, what with his criticism of the financial legerdemain and dishonesty on which his recent predecessors had relied. Malloy pledged to stop that stuff by following Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. But Connecticut’s economic collapse, precipitated by those predecessors, turned out to be too overwhelming.Even with the record tax increase imposed by the new governor and the big Democratic majority in the General Assembly, state government is again running a huge deficit, so now the governor and legislature have resorted to form — accounting tricks, bonding for current expenses, cheating the neediest and politically weakest, and reducing payments to hospitals for treating the indigent. With the sick and indigent, the governor and legislators seem to have figured that the hospitals would recover their losses by charging more to patients with insurance, causing medical insurers to raise rates, essentially a tax increase that gets around the governor’s pledge to avoid more tax increases.And this time the governor, the leaders of the legislature’s Democratic majority, and the leaders of the Republican minority congratulated each other for being bipartisan — indeed, almost unanimous — about it, as if there was political heroism rather than the usual cowardice in taking from the neediest to keep protecting the government class and crony capitalists getting government subsidies.As they are the party of the government class and crony capitalists, nothing more can be expected from the Democrats. But now that even the Republicans are in on this disaster, what exactly is Connecticut’s political alternative? And if there is no political alternative and you’re not a member of those classes, why stick around?In reply to complaints in this space that treatment of the autistic and mentally ill is more compelling than paying state government employees not to work on Columbus Day, a state employee asks: Why do you hate us so?But that’s no argument. It’s the dodge offered by state employees to deflect any criticism of state government’s mistaken priorities, which put state employee compensation ahead of everything else. A better question is: Insisting on all their silly paid holidays while services to the neediest are cut, why do state employees hate the autistic and mentally ill so?The Malloy administration says Connecticut is open for business. But try telling that to the Rhode Island moving company that recently sought to open in North Stonington. The Day of New London reports that the company, Coutu Bros. Movers of Warwick, was denied a license by the state Transportation Department because its doing business in Connecticut would increase competition and the company had not proven a need for its services.Two moving companies in nearby Stonington objected to the Transportation Department about their potential competitor. Prior to The Day’s report, who would have thought that Connecticut required a new moving company to get a special license, much less to prove a need for its services? The state makes no such demands of most other new businesses here.Of course liquor stores are something else, liquor retailers long having held an anti-competitive lock on public policy and craven state legislators. But Gov. Malloy has begun to contest that. Thanks to him, at least now people can buy liquor on Sunday.The owner of the Rhode Island moving company says he’ll expand in Massachusetts instead because that state encouraged him and gave him a license in 15 minutes. He adds that the paperwork at Connecticut’s Transportation Department was overwhelming — maybe because the department wanted to keep him out all along.Whenever the law allows business to obstruct competition, that’s crony capitalism too and another reason for the state’s decline.Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.