Godfrey says pendulum should swing back toward middle class

By Scott Benjamin

DANBURY – State Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury said he was “shocked” last summer to see a United Way report indicate that 31,000 households – half of those in the Hat City – were either hovering just above the poverty line or were below that measure.

Godfrey, who was initially elected to the state House in 1988, said it is part of a trend since 2000 in which steps have been taken “to make the rich, richer and move the middle class down the economic scale.”

Danbury’s economy is marked with contrasts.

Economist Donald Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners in New Haven said last year that the metro Danbury area is the only region in Connecticut that has more than recaptured the jobs that it lost in the Great Recession of 2008.

He has noted that, among other things, the Hat City has a diversified manufacturing base that includes pharmaceuticals, ball bearings and fuel cells, according to CT Mirror.

The Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce has reported for years that the city ranks first in Connecticut in sales tax revenue – largely due to the Danbury Fair Mall, which opened in 1986 – and also ranks first, per capita in restaurants, many of which are located on the west side, near the mall.

Yet, Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, said last October that there is more poverty in the Hat City now than when he was initially elected in 2001. The mayor, who has run three times for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, said that currently that more than 50 percent of the students in Danbury’s public schools are on reduced lunch.

He has said the trend is largely due to stagnation in middle class wages since the subprime mortgage crisis surfaced in 2007.

Godfrey said that in recent years economic policies from the federal level on down have benefitted the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

He said in an interview that in Connecticut the wealthy pay about four percent of their income for state and municipal taxes while the average for the middle class is about 8.5 percent of their income.

“That’s not equitable,” said Godfrey, who is one of the 45 members of the Progressive Democrats Caucus, which has nearly half of the party’s members in the lower chamber of the General Assembly.

“Everybody should be paying about the same percentage,” he added.

“[Nationally] the gap between the rich and poor is as vast now as it has ever been,” former U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who is running for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination, stated in his 2018 book, “The Right Answer.”

However, former state Sen. Jamie McLaughlin (R-Darien), a wealth management consultant who formerly lived in Woodbury, has said that nine municipalities in the Fairfield County Gold Coast – Greenwich, Darien, Stamford, New Canaan, Redding, Weston, Westport, Wilton and Fairfield - provide a large share of the state’s tax revenues. Without them, he contends Connecticut’s economy would be more like Kentucky’s or Rhode Island’s.

Godfrey, who is the Deputy House Speaker Tempore, said when the income tax was enacted in 1991 the state “erased” the dividends tax, which was largely paid by investors in the Fairfield County Gold Coast and reduced the sales tax.

He said the “only tax we haven’t reformed in the last 30 years” is the property tax.

Property tax reform was a staple in Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D-Greenwich) platform during the 2018 campaign, and has been a high profile issue for the Democrats at various times since former state Comptroller Bill Curry’s (D-Farmington) initial bid for governor in 1994.

Curry said last year that property tax reform would do more than anything to reduce costs for cities and small businesses in those urban areas, which are sometimes hampered by large parcels of land that are not on the tax rolls because they are occupied by state operations or colleges and universities.

State Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney (D-New Haven) recently proposed a program that would feature elimination of the municipal property tax on vehicles, which would be replaced by a state vehicle tax that would range between 15 and 19 mills with revenue largely going to municipalities that that have large tax-free property owners and funding for public kindergarten through 12^th grade school programs.

“I like the concept,” said Godfrey. “How can you tax something on wheels in a different way depending on where you park it?”

The state representative, who has long been a supporter of a $15 an hour minimum wage, said for decades presidents of both parties – Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson adopted policies “to take the working class and move them up to the middle class.”

He said those policies have been absent over the last generation.

MSN.com reported this month that American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations data indicates that, for example, the CEO of McDonald’s makes 3,101 times as much money as the salary for the median worker at the fast-food chain.

Steven Pearlstein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning economics writer for The Washington Post, stated in his 2018 book, “Can American Capitalism Survive?” that starting in the 1980s major corporations put more emphasis on pleasing shareholders instead of workers as they faced the demands of global competition from Japan and South Korea.

He said years ago if a Chief Executive Officer got $800 million in compensation, his friends at the country club would criticize him for making business executives look bad.

Pearlstein, a graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, has called for federal tax incentives to put an equal amount of bonus money, which has often all been given to CEOs, and place it in a pool for employees.

Godfrey said that proposal is worth consideration.

Pearlstein said in an interview last year with Recode.com that too often corporate executives believe that the rank and file “don’t deserve to enjoy the fact that we had a great year.”

Despite increased poverty over the last generation, Godfrey is enthused about some parts of the metro Danbury economy.

He said even with increased competition from Amazon and other online retailers he expects the Danbury Fair Mall to continue to thrive.

He said that other large employers, such as Danbury Hospital, Boehringer Ingelheim and Cartus will continue to have large numbers of employees.

He said he has worked with state Rep. Michelle Cook (D-Torrington) to help secure contracts for Fuel Cell Energy, which has its administrative offices in Danbury and its manufacturing headquarters in Torrington. Last year the company captured contracts with Derby and Hartford.

Godfrey noted that trend will likely continue since state Rep. David Arconti (D-109) of Danbury is now the House Chairman of the General Assembly’s Energy Committee and state Rep. Raghib Allie-Brennan (D-2) of Bethel, whose district includes part of Danbury, is the committee’s House vice chairman.

Fuel Cell Energy had not been selected for some state contracts in 2016 and laid off 96 workers late that year.

Godfrey said although Connecticut is hampered by being a largely suburban state when companies now prefer large innovation hubs, such as the Route 128 corridor near Boston – he believes that Lamont and the General Assembly can significantly boost economic growth by investing in the state’s community colleges and technical high schools.

He said administrators at Henry Abbott Tech in Danbury, for example, have said that they don’t graduate enough students to fill all the positions available in some trades.

Candidates ranging from Lamont, a progressive Democrat, to U.S. Senate contender Dominic Rapini of Branford, a Donald Trump Republican, said during the 2018 campaign that they offered heard from employers that they couldn’t find enough qualified applicants.

“There needs to be a lot of investment, and I think that will happen,’ Godfrey said of the governor’s comments during the campaign to address the job shortage.

Godfrey said he expects that based on the governor’s comments that the leaders of the state employee collective bargaining units will be asked to return to the negotiating table.

He said the state employees have made considerable concessions over the last decade. A report from a consultant to the state Office of Policy & Management, the governor’s budget-making arm, has stated that the 2017 agreement will save taxpayers $24 billion over the 20 years until 2037.

“Demonizing them drives me crazy,” said Godfrey. "For at least the last decade they have come forward and helped out."

Critics have said major revisions will have to be made in a state employee pension system that, according to the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness, is only 29 percent funded. Godfrey said governors for generations didn’t put enough money annually into the system until Dannel Malloy (D-Essex) took office in 2011.

Regarding Malloy, the only Democrat to serve for at least two terms in the position since William O’Neill (D-East Hampton) a generation ago, Godfrey said he would give Malloy “a solid B-plus” for his performance.

He applauded many of Malloy’s initiatives on criminal justice reform – which lowered the prison population to its lowest level since 1994 – as well as his efforts on environmental regulations, civil rights and election reform.

He said Malloy took steps to ensure that defense manufacturers would stay in Connecticut over the next generation.

Godfrey said he was more supportive than some other legislators of Malloy’s First Five Plus program, which provided incentives for companies such as ESPN, the sports cable network in Bristol, and Bridgewater Associates, the Westport hedge fund, if they expanded their operations. Godfrey noted that similar incentives were provided for other companies through the Small Business Express program that Malloy helped initiate.

“He actually governed,” said Godfrey. He said some of Malloy’s immediate predecessors were too intent of doing what was popular instead of making the difficult decisions.

That may have been the reason that a poll of governors last year indicated that Malloy was the second least popular state chief executive in the country.

Godfrey acknowledged that even if Connecticut’s economy was booming some constituent groups would still have reservations about Malloy.

He said the heating oil dealers were upset over the 2013 plan to increase accessibility to natural gas. Some liquor store owners were miffed about the extended night and weekend hours and the threat to repeal minimum pricing and make the industry more competitive.

Godfrey said Malloy maintained an ambitious pace of meetings with constituent groups but spent little time conferring with legislators.

“He didn’t have an understanding of how the Legislature works,” Godfrey said of Malloy. “You can’t just talk to the six leaders. You have to talk to everybody.”

Godfrey largely withheld comment on Lamont’s potential fiscal plans since the new governor is not expected to present his proposed budget until February 20.

However, he said that he is encouraged by his outreach so far to legislators and constituents.

Godfrey said he can see the governor’s parking space from the window in his office and he seldom sees his car there.

“That tells me that he’s meeting with business owners and constituent groups and getting a more personal feel for what the challenges are,” the state representative said.

Godfrey said even as recently as last spring, he would not have predicted the success that Democrats would have in the November election, where they added 13 seats in the state House, five in the state Senate and captured the governor’s office despite Malloy’s poor poll numbers.

Gary Rose, the widely-quoted Sacred Heart University Political Science professor, has said that the state’s slow climb out of the recession had all the marks of a change election, but that Republicans were hurt by poor poll numbers for President Donald Trump and GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski’s error in clinging to a pledge of gradually abolishing the state income tax. Rose has said that allowed Lamont to discuss how the lack of an income tax would hurt various constituent groups.

“It was very difficult last spring to get any measure in what was going on in the general public,” Godfrey said. “But by the summer there was a tremendous trend of people registering as Democrats, which I had not seen before."

“People were afraid of the Republicans,” he added, apparently alluding to Trump. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll indicated that 54 percent of those surveyed would not vote for the president in 2020.

The election marked the first time in more than a century that a Democratic governor in Connecticut didn’t seek re-election and a Democrat succeeded him.