The state budget battle intensifies. Urban legislators who want to raise taxes on the wealthy fired at Office of Policy and Management Secretary Melissa McCaw. She fired back.
From Keith Phaneuf, CT Mirror
…”What I’m seeing in this budget does not look like equity,” said Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, who added that Connecticut cannot expect to combat systemic injustice without investing more in core services–and that requires raising more revenue.
… McCaw took issue, though, saying the administration is investing more than $230 million in federal pandemic relief in affordable housing and rent relief. Additional investments were made in social service agencies to reflect higher caseloads, if not to raise rates.
Connecticut still has the most generous Medicaid eligibility standards of any state, she added, and the proposed asset test is more lenient than similar ones in 38 other states.
“I’m not going to sit here as an OPM secretary–and as the first African-American OPM secretary–and take shots that the Black woman did not invest in equity,” she said, adding the governor proposed more investments in health care and education through the state’s bond package. “This is about a frank discussion.”
Full story here.
Connecticut, post-COVID, is on track to resuming a plan-less, clue-less, “post-industrial,” socioeconomic slide toward Third World status.
Gov. Ned has been quite capable — showing excellent leadership skills — in serving as a steady, pragmatic, team-player (in a regional context) during the on-going COVID crisis. But we have to remember that he is just another down-county Republicrat, cut from the same cloth as Joe Lieberman, et al., that has little interest in restructuring Connecticut society toward anything resembling logical, urban primacy, or anything resembling social equity, otherwise… He will not invest seriously in cities, or their people (other than to secure the indicated number of “sucker” votes that need to be secured before re-election time). He will not take any actions, indicated, or not, that will disrupt the regional/statewide, geopolitical/social balance in Connecticut… Connecticut will continue to revolve around its economic crown of Stamford, with the surrounding Gold Coast jewels doing all of the shining for the state. Otherwise, the ‘burbs of the state will continue on in their servile roles as vassals of the Gold Coast, with Bridgeport, Waterbury, et al., providing the “serfs” to maintain Stamford Plantation…
We will not reindustrialize under Ned, since that would undermine the geopolitical, strategic advantage of the financial sector in the Connecticut economy for the elite caste of the Gold Coast…
The “regulated”, utility monopolies (the bedrock of the Connecticut hedge-fund-dependent ruling class) will continue to be allowed — encouraged — to parasitically devastate Connecticut household finances with illegal, unjustifiable levies and profits, even as their pernicious, co-dependent hold on the Governor’s Office and Connecticut GA prevents the revitalization of the moribund Connecticut economy. (Ned would have us think that the biggest threat to the Connecticut economy is the tax-protest-defined flight of a few replaceable rich folks by minimal real estate and capital gains levies earmarked for the urban, work-horse cities…).
So; urban GA members: Don’t be afraid to go for broke during this session for your constituents. Go for the wealth taxes. Push urban initiatives. Reach for the sky for Connecticut’s cities. Jobs and tax base for the cities — and the state/federal, and policy, to accomplish such — should be your legislative goals. More of of the same during this pandemic session will give us just that. More of the same will incentivize us — the voters — to give you and Ned the boot at election time, as we see the smoke settle around the post-Pandemic ruins of Connecticut and the world. Now is the time to be farsighted and bold — for your constituents and the state… Don’t fear Ned. Fear the local ballot-boxes