Gucker commends Lamont for keeping Connecticut safe

By Scott Benjamin

DANBURY – State Rep. Ken Gucker (D-138) praises Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) for keeping Connecticut safe during the pandemic, but says elected officials face hurdles in returning it to normal.

“I think [Lamont’s] done a great job, especially dealing with a situation that no one has had to deal with before,” said the first-term legislator from Danbury, whose district includes pieces of the Hat City, Ridgefield and New Fairfield.

He lauded the governor for following Center For Disease Control guidelines and encouraging social distancing.

Due to an increase in COVID-19 cases in other states, Lamont has paused the next phase of the reopening. For example, he is only allowing bars to serve food outdoors.

“I’m very concerned about opening up too soon,” Gucker remarked in an interview. “If we open up too soon we could be back to where we were. Our main concern is on the health and well-being of our constituents.”

The Washington Post reported on July 12 that “states such as Florida, California, Texas and Arizona are setting daily records for coronavirus cases and more than 70 percent of the country has either paused or reversed reopening plans, according to Goldman Sachs.”

Gucker said the school reopening in late August could be problematical, noting that Danbury High School, for example, has the highest enrollment in the state and “changing classes when students are elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder” could create risks.

Also, he said he has received “numerous calls from senior citizens and other groups that are concerned about having to go vote in person,”

Gucker, a small businessman and former vice chairman of the Danbury Democratic Town Committee, said he hopes that during one of the upcoming special sessions, the General Assembly will consider wider absentee voting and early voting, proposals that have been offered over the recent years by Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (D-Hartford).

Regarding the economic recovery – in which the national unemployment rate surged from 3.5 percent in February to 14.7 percent in April and then decreased to 11.1 percent in June – Gucker said more federal stimulus will be needed.

“I think that more help is needed for small businesses,” said Gucker.

University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and Stephen Moore, a member of Republican President Donald Trump’s Economic Recovery Task Force recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that future stimulus should be focused on suspension of the payroll tax through the rest of the year instead of “supplemental unemployment payments initiated in March, which are scheduled to end July 31.”

They stated that the “payroll tax suspension would reward employees for returning to their jobs and working more hours by providing a 7.5 percent rise in their take-home pay immediately on income up to $137,700 (Income over this amount would be taxed at the usual rate, which is lower.”

Gucker said, “I agree and disagree” with the proposal.

He explained, “I do have some concerns about people saying, ‘Why do I need to go back to work when I’m getting unemployment and stimulus.’ That’s making it tough to motivate them to come back. And at some point we need to end that. When that comes, I’m not sure.”

Gucker said one survey indicated that Connecticut is positioned as the seventh best state to recover from the recession.

On another topic, state Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) has said that considering the highest unemployment since the Great Depression the state employees made an error in accepting a 3.5 percent wage increase on July 1.

Gucker disagreed, saying that, “They [the state employees] made sacrifices to get us through the Great Recession,” he said. “If I was a state employee, I would be very upset. At some point we need to honor our commitments.”

On a related subject, University of Connecticut Finance Professor Fred Carstensen recently told Patch.com that, "Few legislators appreciate how bad we're doing."

Carstensen, the director of the Connecticut Center For Economic Analysis, predicted that as a result of the economic impact from the pandemic the state government will make major cuts to "municipal aid, education and higher education."

However, Gucker said the economic numbers from the state comptroller’s office change almost daily and, furthermore, said state officials also should be cautious about slashing expenses.

“It has always been this cut, cut, cut,” he said. “We can’t cut our way out of the problem.”

Gucker said the surge of unemployment claims were processed through an “outdated computer system” that should have been replaced long ago. He said the state Department of Labor “had to start hiring back workers” to address the volume of paper work.

Gucker said that “to a certain point” he supports Lamont’s debt diet, where the governor has tried to trim $700 million a year in bond appropriations.

“We can’t ignore state grants for school construction,” he explained. “We can’t have a starvation diet.”

Gucker opposed the governor’s plan to install tolls, noting that the shift from tolls to all vehicles to just tractor trailer trucks and other alternations didn’t inspire public confidence.

“The plan changed so many times that people were not comfortable with it,” Gucker said. He added that a survey of his constituents done last year reported three to one opposition to installing tolls.

Lamont said in February that he would abandon his plan for tolls and instead bond for transportation infrastructure improvements.

Gucker won the seat with 51 percent of the vote in 2018 over first –term Republican Michael Ferguson. He will face Danbury Republican City Council member Emile Buzaid Jr. in the November 3 election.

Said Gucker, “My district is extremely conservative. I have people living in a $50,000 house to a $5.2 million mini-mansion on the other side of town.”

Since its current configuration began in 1992, the only other Democrat elected in the 138th District was Grace Scire of Danbury, who narrowly won a special election in early 2002 and then lost her bid for a full term in November.

Danbury Republican Mayor Mark Boughton, the longest serving mayor in city history, was elected to two terms in the seat. He was the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor in 2010 and captured the party’s gubernatorial nomination at the state convention in 2018 before placing second three months later in a primary.

The seat also has been held by two former Republican nominees in the Fifth Congressional District – Mark Nielsen, who also was legal counsel for Mitt

Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts, and David Cappiello, who later managed one of WWE executive Linda McMahon’s U.S. Senate campaigns.

Danbury Town Clerk Jan Giegler, a Republican, was elected seven times before departing the seat in early 2017.

Gucker said Danbury, one of the few municipalities in Connecticut that is adding population, is experiencing growing pains.

Attorney Chris Setaro,, the Danbury Democratic mayoral candidate in 2019, campaigned on a platform that the city didn’t have enough schools for the influx of students and the high-density development wasn’t paying for the costs of educating the students.

The former mayoral contender told Patch.com last year that Danbury had the “lowest per pupil expenditure in the state.”

Gucker said, “Stop giving tax breaks to residential developers. The money you’re getting from these high density projects is not covering the expenses in the schools.”

He said the Hat City also is attracting people from the New York suburbs.

“What is happening is the same thing that happened in the ‘80s,” Gucker explained. “It’s not our immigrant population that is growing in vast numbers, it is the people from Westchester County, who are escaping the high taxes. They’re escaping high housing costs. They don’t mind coming here and buying a $600,000 town house. You see it on the west side of my district.”