Frank Fond Of Talking To Connecticut Grassroots

By Scott Benjamin

NEWTOWN – The Nutmeg State may be currently mired in Nor’easters and Major League Baseball’s opening day is still two weeks away, but for Monte Frank it’s as though the leaves have fallen and pumpkins are being sold at the local market.

“Unlike other candidates, we’re meeting with voters and we’re running for November now,” says Frank, a Newtown attorney and former Democrat who is going for the office of lieutenant governor on a gubernatorial ticket headed by Oz Griebel of Simsbury, a former Republican and until recently the head of the Metro Hartford Alliance.

Instead of spending nights talking to political party town committees and devoting daytime hours pleading with convention delegates by phone for an endorsement, Griebel, who sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2010, and Frank, who is best known for organizing a group of bicyclists to promote gun violence prevention, are shaking hands and discussing issues with the rank and file

“I love it,” said Frank, a former president of the Connecticut Bar Association.

So much so that it has become a second full-time job in addition to his work at a Bridgeport-based law firm.

He said he’s spending 30 to 40 hours a week speaking with voters at pancake breakfasts, house parties, road races and crafts fairs. And he may even ride his bike through all of Connecticut’s 169 towns before the November 6 election.

Currently their ticket has more than 100 volunteers collecting the 7,500 signatures required to get on the ballot, a goal that they believe might be attainable by the end of March.

They will not participate in the state Citizen Election Program funding, citing Connecticut’s projected $224 million deficit for the current fiscal year and larger gaps forecast for the future.

Frank insisted that digital communication allows candidates to run less expensively and that the social media will be a major component of their outreach.

He said that since he and Griebel are focused on solutions, they have their own ideas and are willing to support proposals from the left, right and center, depending on what makes the most sense.

Frank said that contrasts with the current roller derby for the major parties where it seems that no Democrat dares to offend the Bernie Sanders faction and no Republican will say that they want to increase taxes or spending.

“People are going to their corners and no one is willing to talk to someone to find solutions to the problems,” Frank said in an interview.

“By far, the number one issue is the economy,” he said of the feedback he’s received from voters. He said personal safety following the number of mass shootings in recent years is “probably the second biggest concern.”

Frank is the leader of Team 26, the cyclists who have ridden from Newtown to Washington, D.C. each of the last five years to promote gun violence protection following the shootings in 2012 at Newtown’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Interestingly, their ticket endorses several of the policies of departing Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford), who is not seeking a seeking a third term and reportedly has among the lowest public approval ratings of any governor in the country.

Frank said, if elected, he and Griebel are committed to continue Malloy’s efforts to pare the full-time state work force, which the governor has said is 12.6 percent smaller than when he took office in 2011.

Additionally, Frank said they would continue Malloy’s practice of fully funding the state pension fund annually, a practice that apparently had been neglected by governors for at least a generation which has resulted in them only being 35.5 percent funded.

Frank said their goal would be to get the collective bargaining units back to the bargaining table to secure further concessions on the pension plan.

However, the collective bargaining unit leaders have noted that under last year’s agreement, the state workers are contributing more to their pensions and that overall the concessions package will save the state $24 billion over 20 years.

Frank also credited Malloy for making intelligent criminal justice reforms and taking a strong stand to combat gun violence.

Frank said the state already is reaping dividends from the Malloy’s decision to provide $291 million to bring the Jackson Labs bioscience center to the University of Connecticut Medical Center campus in Farmington.

“A lot of companies in Connecticut are using Jackson Labs to further their research,” he said of the company, which began operations in 2014.

Frank said that “generally” their ticket is interested in building upon Malloy’s program to develop more affordable housing.

He said that can particularly be valuable in the cities and near transit areas where lower-income workers use buses to get to jobs out of town.

Regarding the recent report from the Connecticut Commission For Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth, Frank said their ticket had already endorsed building a science and technology college campus in a major city. He said that Bridgeport and Hartford would probably be the better options since New Haven and Stamford currently already have more sound economies.

He said they want to hear the testimony before the General Assembly’s committees before taking a definitive position on the commission’s recommendation to lower income tax rates to 5.75 and 3.5 percent and exempt residents earning less than $20,000 annually from paying that levy. Concurrently, the sales tax would be boosted from 6.35 percent up to 7.25 percent.

Frank did say that state government needs to be cognizant of the many wealthy people just below the one percent line that have left the state in recent years after closing their small businesses.

“We get a large percentage of the revenue is from a small group of people,” he said. “New Canaan sends more tax revenue to the state than New Haven, Bridgeport and Hartford combined.”

On job growth, Frank said he believes Stamford and Greenwich, which have long been leaders in financial services, could grow further by attracting financial technology firms.

He said the state, which began losing manufacturing jobs in the early 1980s, is now primed to boost that employment through the increase in defense hiring at the Electric Boat submarine operation in Groton and the aero-space positions that will be added in the coming years at Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney in East Hartford and the Lockheed Martin facility at Igor Sikorsky in Stratford.

Frank said ascending to a $15 hour minimum wage, which the commission also endorsed, will depend on how well Connecticut, which has fewer jobs now than in 1987, continues to rebound from the 2008 recession The commission reported that the state’s economy shrank by eight percent between 2007 and 2016 and it is the only New England state that hasn’t recovered all of the jobs lost during the recession.

Some Democrats want to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2023.

Frank said after installing a $15 wage, New York City businesses have raised prices and in some cases reduced hours for their employees.

“We would love to have $15 an hour if it makes sense considering where the economy is,” he said.

Frank said the commission also sounded a rim shot by calling for long neglected infrastructure improvements.

He said if he has a 9 a.m. appointment in Stamford he starts the 40-mile drive from Newtown before 7 a.m. to make sure he can navigate the vast traffic congestion on Interstate-95 and the Merritt Parkway.

Malloy - who appointed an ad-hoc transportation study committee in 2015, which Griebel served on – has said the congestion in lower Fairfield County has prompted some potential business clients to opt for New York state’s Westchester County or Northern New Jersey.

Griebel said earlier in the campaign that they support an increase in the gasoline tax to help fund improvements until electronic toll plazas could be installed in three to five years. He also said he wants to re-establish the state Transportation Strategy Board that he once chaired.

Frank said considering it’s a small state, Connecticut doesn’t need a bullet train such as the $77 billion version being proposed in California, but it should advance its rail service so that there are dependable 30-minute cycles from Hartford to New Haven, New Haven to Bridgeport and Bridgeport to Stamford.

Their ticket also wants encourage the 169 municipalities, particularly the smaller ones, to share more services.

“We’re not in favor of county government,” said Frank. “But does every town need to have its own emergency communications system?”

What did he learn at Cornell University, an Ivy League school where he earned both a bachelor’s and a law degree, that is helping him on the campaign trail?

“I’m a believer in the liberal arts education,” said Frank who earned an undergraduate degree in History in the College of Arts & Sciences and now has daughter enrolled in the same program at Cornell.

He said, “It teaches you to read and analyze and be an independent thinker.”