Boughton Says State Should Resolve Fiscal Crisis Without Increasing Taxes

By Scott Benjamin

Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton predicted last December that the state budget deficit for the next two-year cycle could reach an unprecedented $4.5 billion.

At the time, state officials forecast a $3.6 billion revenue shortfall.

Now with the April 15 income tax data available, the figure had been revised to an unheard of $5.2 billion gap for the fiscal cycle that starts in July.

Still, Boughton says he opposes increasing taxes to resolve the deficit.

University of Connecticut economist Fred Carstensen told CT Mirror in February that, “This ‘austerity is the path from prosperity’ line is ridiculous” and that taxes will have to be raised to make the Nutmeg State fiscally stable.

“I disagree on that,” said Boughton, who occasionally speaks with Carstensen.

The mayor, who is seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination for the third time, says since the state is engulfed in a fiscal emergency, all players should use the opportunity to restructure state operations for the long term.

“If it takes until October [to get it done],” he said in an interview. “Kicking the can down the road is going to put us in the same position next year.”

Princeton University economist Paul Krugman wrote recently in his New York Times column that Gov. Jerry Brown increased taxes in California in 2012 and it now has more robust economic activity and a lower unemployment rate.

“I don’t think that’s the model,” declared Boughton, a former Danbury High School Social Studies teacher who is seeking his ninth term this year as mayor of Connecticut’s seventh largest city.

“We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” he said.

Boughton said one of the big-ticket items should be a concessions plan from the state employee collective bargaining units that would include reductions in their pension benefits. The state is currently only funded for 35.5 percent of those obligations, according to CT NewsJunkie.

He said Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford), who will not be seeking a third term next year, and the General Assembly should attempt to emulate the recently government restructuring accomplished in Wisconsin, Texas, Tennessee and Florida.

For example, Boughton said Connecticut has spent too much on bond appropriations over the last 20 years.

“There are too many frivolous projects,” he added.

Nick Perna of Ridgefield, the retired economist for Webster Bank, told CT Mirror last month that Connecticut has a “boat load” of public colleges and universities.

Has the state’s public higher education system been overbuilt?

“I don’t think so,” said Boughton, who indicated that he wouldn’t close any campuses even though enrollments have been declining for years.

He has a bachelor’s degree from Central Connecticut State University in New Britain and a master’s degree from Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

Boughton said he would make a change by having the community colleges and state technical high schools - which “have a lot of synergy” - partner so that students could move automatically from their secondary school curriculum to a two-year college.

He also has long advocated abolishing the Board of Regents, which Malloy helped establish in 2011. Boughton has called it “redundant” and “a waste” of student funds. The mayor has said he would rather have site-based management in which each public college has its own governing board and each president “gets to be the boss” instead of having to report to the president of the Board of Regents.

On the revenue side, Malloy has said the state has suffered from a decline in its potent financial services sector in lower Fairfield County, noting that the taxpayers in the top 1 percent generate 30 percent of the revenue, according to CT NewsJunkie.

Although, Connecticut has fewer jobs now than in 1989 and has been the slowest of the six New England states to recapture positions since the 2008 recession, it has grown considerably over the last generation in entertainment-related fields.

However, the slot revenues from the two Native American casinos in the southeast part of the state have slowed since the recession and ESPN in Bristol, which nearly doubled its work force between 2000 and 2013, is laying off employees as former subscribers switch from cable to online streaming.

Plus, the granddaddy of fuel cell research, UTC Power, closed its operations in South Windsor in 2014 after being purchased by an Oregon-based company. Some years ago, U.S. Rep. John Larson (D-1) of East Hartford insisted that fuel cell technology would become the Nutmeg State’s biggest export.

Boughton acknowledged that it also is more difficult to “lasso” major corporations - such as Union Carbine and Boehringer Ingelheim, which moved to the area in the late 1970s, around the time that his father, the late Don Boughton - was mayor of Danbury.

Many college-educated mellenials are living in the big-city innovation hubs near Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, which puts suburban Connecticut at a disadvantage.

So where will the new jobs come from?

Boughton said they will mostly be developed in the hacker space innovation centers such as the one in downtown Danbury where ambitious people are formulating ideas for start-ups.

The mayor said in addition to adding “dozens” of small businesses he believes that someone will develop a major enterprise that will significantly boost Connecticut’s economy.

University of California-Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti stated in his 2012 book, “The New Geography of jobs” that Microsoft began a generation ago in Albuquerque and then moved and became a resounding success in Seattle, which seemed an unlikely location for a software innovation hub.

Boughton acknowledged that for generations Connecticut governors have faced the obstacle of trying to generate economic development in a state where there are dozens of municipalities with restrictive land-use policies.

In the 1980s Danbury decided to approve building a shopping mall on the grounds where the popular state fair and stock car race track were located. Now the city ranks first in Connecticut in sales tax revenue, largely because of the mall, and is first, per capita, in the state in restaurants.

Shortly before he launched his initial campaign in 2009, former Brookfield First Selectman Bill Davidson said the town needed to have a conversation about whether it wanted commercial development in the 198-acre Town District Center near the Four Corners and the cornfield on Junction Road.

However, in Roxbury - for example, where the residents adore rural living – the town isn’t having that conversation.

“A lot of decisions were made 100 years ago, so you can’t unwind them,” Boughton said regarding the character of the state’s small towns.

“But I think we can increase our tax base in Connecticut so that Roxbury can remain Roxbury and Danbury can remain Danbury,” he said.

“However, we need to think strategically about sharing services,” Boughton added. “It makes no sense to have 150 public safety access points” in Connecticut.

On a related topic the mayor said there is potential for some of the state property in Southbury and Newtown, for example, and in other locations to be developed into commercial partnerships between colleges and private companies.

Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson wrote in her 2015 book, “The Selfie Vote,” that Dave Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report, has identified how retail and political marketing have intersected.

She wrote that Wasserman has noted that Democrats tend to live near Whole Foods stores and Republicans near Cracker Barrel restaurants. Municipalities that have both a Whole Foods and a Cracker Barrel are swing areas.

Connecticut, as one would expect with a seven-member congressional delegation consisting of just Democrats, is a Whole Foods state.

Based on Internet research, there are nine Whole Foods stores in Connecticut, with two in West Hartford. There are just two Cracker Barrels – one in East Windsor and the other in Milford, which is the only one of the 169 municipalities that has both a Cracker Barrel and a Whole Foods.

Boughton governs the largest municipality that has a Whole Foods in Connecticut. He has been mayor longer than anyone in the Hat City and has been applauded for his bipartisanship.

For example, his chief of staff, Dean Esposito, was his Democratic opponent in the 2005 mayoral election.

Can the mayor of a Whole Foods city become governor of a Whole Foods state?

Boughton was the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor in 2010 on a ticket headed by former U.S. Ambassador Tom Foley of Greenwich that lost in a photo finish. He placed second to Foley at the Republican convention in 2014 but ultimately opted out of the primary field when his prospective running mate couldn’t annex enough petition signatures to get on the ballot, which created obstacles in generating sufficient funds for the race.

Over the last generation, the Connecticut GOP has had more success in winning that office than any other major government position. The party hasn’t won a U.S. Senate race since 1982 or a U.S. House race since 2006.

But Republican candidates have won four of the last six gubernatorial elections, and have been very competitive in each of the last seven. Over than same span, no Republican presidential candidate has captured Connecticut.

With an open seat, the starting gate is full. The list of definite and prospective hopefuls also includes Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst, state Sen. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, state Rep. Prasad Srinivasan of Glastonbury, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker of Bridgeport, former U.S. Senate and Secretary of the State contender Peter Lumaj of Fairfield and former U.S. House candidate Steve Obsitnik of Westport.

“It’s a marathon,” said Boughton, who didn’t enter the 2010 race until February 1 of that year, about three months after Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Brookfield announced that she would not be seeking a second full term. During the 2014 cycle he launched his exploratory committee in August 2013.

He opened his current gubernatorial campaign last fall and through the March 31 reporting period had raised $91,000 while simultaneously collecting contributions for his mayoral re-election bid.

The Hartford Courant has reported that Srinivasan surprised political insiders by raising $138,000 through March 31 following an ambitious round of fund-raising receptions across Connecticut.

“We believe that we have a path to [$250,000] by the end of the year,” Bougthon said of the threshold in contributions of $100 or less that would qualify for $1.4 million through the primary and $6.5 million through the general election from the state’s Citizens Election Fund.

“Who gets there first doesn’t matter,” he said of reaching the magic number. “No one ever remembers who gets there first.”

State Rep. Steve Harding (R-107) of Brookfield, who supports Boughton primarily because of his performance in boosting Danbury’s economy, said he believes the mayor is devoting more resources to fund-raising now than in his previous two runs for governor.

Boughton said improved information technology has made micro-targeting more valuable.

He said the candidates that are likely to succeed are the ones that ambitiously “integrate” digital advertising into their campaign.

“It is the network broadcast of the 21^st century,” Boughton said.

However, political polling received criticism even before the inaccurate forecasts of the 2016 presidential election.

Getting a valid sample has become cumbersome with the sharp increase in cellular phone-only voters.

Boughton said it is “hit and miss” even with pollsters that are conscientious about trying to survey voters who exclusively utilize cellular phones.