Despite pension woes, Harding opposes full-time General Assembly

By Scott Benjamin

BROOKFIELD – State Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) says state government has "failed” the voters, but he doesn’t think the solution is to turn a part-time General Assembly into full-time venue.

CTNewsJunkie columnist Susan Bigelow wrote in January that the part-time Legislature is “a huge problem” and the time has come to “make the Legislature into a full-time professional organization.”

Stated Bigelow, “Our system was created for a time when government was smaller, the population was far less, and the business of the Legislature was a lot lighter. A modern, complex state like ours can’t be run this way.”

Connecticut approved its first $2 billion state budget in 1977, under then-Gov. Ella Grasso (D-Windsor Locks), and now the figure is more than 10 times higher.

The last major reform of the General Assembly began in 1971, when the legislators started holding annual sessions instead of just meeting in the odd-numbered years.

Bigelow noted that neighboring Massachusetts has a full-time Legislature.

She wrote that with a Legislature that has a June deadline in odd-numbered years and a May deadline in even-numbered years, “plenty of good ideas get shelved because there isn’t time.”

Said Harding of Brookfield, “I don’t think we should move to a full-time Legislature.”

“I think what makes the Legislature work in some respects is that a lot of us have jobs outside the chamber,” he contiued. “We understand what it’s like to work in the real world and generate an income in the real world.”

State Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury, who was initially elected in 1988, told a Political Science class at Western Connecticut State University in 2012 that by having a part-time Legislature the body has attracted a variety of different legislators in terms of those who also have full-time jobs, part-time jobs or are full-time legislators.

In a 1999 interview, former Brookfield resident Jamie McLaughlin, who served from 1981 to 1991 in the state House and then the Senate and has a master’s degree from Harvard, said that collectively the members of the General Assembly were not the most intelligent group he had been around but “they were the most earnest group of people” he had experienced.

Harding said, “I think a part-time Legislature is good. I think the far majority of people do it to help their neighbors.”

However, although there have been achievements through the years, the net result with a part-time Legislature is:

- According to the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness report of March 2018, the state employee pension system is only 29 percent funded. Patch.com reported in April 2019 that CT Mirror budget reporter Keith Phaneuf had said that the state employee pensions and the pensions for the public school teachers were structurally underfunded each year from 1939 through 2010.

- A 2017 national engineering report indicates that Connecticut has the worst road network of any state in the country. Fifth-seven percent of the state’s roads were rated to be in poor condition.

Said Harding, “We in state government have failed the residents of the state, but I don’t think that going to a full-time Legislature is going to resolve the problems.”

“We need to do a better job of getting us on good sustainable policy,” he said. “When you’re last in nearly every economic category, it is not healthy.”

Sacred Heart University Executive Director of Athletics Bobby Valentine, the former major league baseball manager, told Patch.com last July that his native Stamford has been successful because over the last 25 years it had adjusted to economic changes and now had as many apartments downtown as the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn or Jersey City in New Jersey. He called Stamford one of the best little cities between Philadelphia and Boston.

“I think the reason that the state of Connecticut is stuck in the mud is because it hasn’t been willing to adjust,” he explained. “When you don’t adjust, you fail.”

In her column Bigelow added that are probably some people who would be interested in running for seats in the General Assembly but can’t because it only pays a base salary of $28,000 a year.

“The job, then, is not open to the poor, or anyone in a line of work not compatible with the Legislature’s schedule,” wrote Bigelow. “I couldn’t do it. Could you? Isn’t that a huge problem?”

“In some respects she is probably correct,” said Harding, whose district includes Brookfield, the Stony Hill section of Bethel and a slice of northern Danbury.

In the 1999 interview, McLaughlin, who was initially elected to the state House age 27, said, “It is not easy, but it is easier to do it in the early stages or the latter stages of your business career, but it is especially not easy trying to be a legislator in the middle stages of your business career when you are likely raising a family.”

Former state Rep. David Scribner (R-107) of Brookfield, who was Harding’s immediate predecessor and the ranking Republican House member on the Transportation Committee, resigned in early January 2015 reportedly because he could no longer support his family on a legislator’s salary. He had served in the seat for nearly 16 years before accepting a position with the state Liquor Control Commission.

Former state Rep. Dave Smith (R-107) of Brookfield, a commercial airline pilot initially elected in 1976, became a noted legislator but announced in the spring 1984 that he would not seek a fifth term because he could no longer just do flights on the weekends and his schedule would conflict with the General Assembly’s calendar.

It also is curious that legislators have not had a pay increase since 2001 and only earn $28,000 annually.

Some observers have indicated that the legislators fear that if they increased their salaries there would be voter outcry.

A CT Hearst analysis from 2018 reported that the top legislative staff salary was $187,044 and there were 107 employees earning more than $100,000 annually.

Apparently the circumstances have become similar, for example, to 1999, when then-Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) earned $78,000 a year and Dean Pagani, his communications director, netted $119,000 annually - $41,000 more than the governor.

The governor began earning $150,000 a year in 2003.

Former state Sen. David Cappiello (R-24) of Danbury told The Litchfield County Times in 2008 that the General Assembly suffers from having “very few members who have ever owned their own business.”

It appears unclear whether making the body full-time would address that issue.

Additionally, have the voters of Connecticut selected the best governors over the last generation?

For example, in neighboring Massachusetts, over the last 30 years, if you just consider some the Republican governors, you have William Weld, who was elected in 1990, reduced taxes 21 times even though there were Democratic majorities in the Legislature. He captured a second term with 71 percent of the vote. He was the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016 and is now mounting a challenge to President Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.

Mitt Romney was elected in 2002, got a major health care reform approved, was nearly elected president and now has been lauded in some quarters for being the only GOP U.S. senator to vote to convict Republican President Donald Trump in the reach impeachment trial.

Massachusetts’ current governor, Charlie Baker, was initially elected in 2014, and has become a model for Republican gubernatorial candidates in Connecticut.

Bob Stefanowski, the Madison financial executive who captured the 2018 GOP gubernatorial nomination, and former Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst, who was a contestant in the primary, made favorable references to Baker during their bids for state’s top elected office.

A 2019 poll indicated that Baker was the most popular governor in the country.

Between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, Rowland became the first Connecticut governor since the late 1700s to be elected three times, but subsequently went to prison twice.

“I think all of them [the recent governors] have had some successes,” Harding said. “I think some of them have had some failures.”

“I think this is a holistic issue,” he added, noting that over many years various state officials have made poor decisions.

“I’m partial to Gov. Rell,” Harding said of M. Jodi Rell, a Republican who was governor from 2004 to early 2011. Rell, a longtime Brookfield resident served for 10 years as the representative from 107^th District.

However, during a public appearance in 2010, months before Rell ended her tenure, former Gov. Lowell Weicker (ACP-Old Lyme) said she had been “indifferent” toward the job.

Harding said, “I don’t believe that. I think he’s wrong in having that perspective.”

The Hartford Courant in 2007 and the Hartford Advocate in 2009 posted stories indicating that Rell had a more limited work schedule than some of the previous governors.

In May 2006, just shortly before she was nominated for a full term, the Quinnipiac Poll reported that Rell, who was noted for her superior people skills, had an unprecedented 83 percent approval rating. She was elected to a full term that fall with about 63 percent of the vote.

Former two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Curry of Farmington told Patch.com in 2018, “Jodi Rell did a fabulous job of pushing campaign finance reform and ethics reform. She made this a more honest state.”

Then-Connecticut State Democratic Executive Director Jonathan Harris of West Hartford, who is now a senior advisor to Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) told a Danbury audience in 2013 that he would “give boatload of credit” to Rell for her handshake tours during her first year in office. She used those sessions to introduce herself to voters who had never elected her as governor, since she was thrust into the job following Rowland’s resignation in 2004.

However, CTNewsJunkie columnist Terry Cowgill wrote in 2016 that he was puzzled by Rell’s enduring popularity.

He stated, “It was Rell who conceded in her final state-of-the-state address that, “The dire consequences we are facing today will pale in comparison to the challenges that will face the next governor, the next legislature.’ ”

Cowgill wrote, “In other words, she helped set the stage for our current woes and simply left messes for others to clean up.”

Rell was criticized for not signing or vetoing, or even line-item vetoing the 2009 budget agreement and allowed it to sit for 10 days and become law automatically.

Godfrey told Patch.com in 2019 that Dannel Malloy (D-Essex), Rell’s, immediate successor, was the first Connecticut governor in a while who “actually governed.”

He gave Malloy, who is now the chancellor of the Maine public high education system, a grade of “B-plus” for this eight years in office.

Malloy is credited with being the first governor in generations to annually fully fund the pensions for the state employees and the public school teachers. He also trimmed the full-time state work force by 13.1 percent, according to CT Hearst columnist Dan Haar.

However, Malloy left office as one of the most unpopular governors in the country.

Godfrey, the deputy House Speaker Pro Tempore, has been far more critical of Lamont telling Patch.com last September that, “Politicians fall down they feel entitled and they grow out of touch. I don’t think [Lamont] was in-touch to begin with.”

He has low poll ratings and was unable to get his signature issue – highway tolls, to fund transportation improvement – even voted upon by the General Assembly.

However, Lamont has been praised for invoking a debt diet to improve Connecticut’s standing with the credit agencies. He also has started to address getting more residents training for unfilled jobs at companies in the Nutmeg State.