Handler Says He Could Handle State Employee Concessions

By Scott Benjamin

Mike Handler, who is among a baseball roster of candidates seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination, says he could persuade the powerful state employee collective bargaining units to accept further concessions to keep the budget from resembling a battered piñata.

Handler, the chief financial officer for Stamford, said he got six of the 10 municipal bargaining units to accept the less-costly defined contribution pension programs in place of defined benefit plans. To accomplish that, he even traveled in police cruisers to make his case.

However, the leaders of the state employee bargaining units have boasted that the contract recently negotiated with Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) will save the state $1.57 billion during the current two-year budget cycle and $24 billion over the next 20 years. They have been criticized by some for resisting major concessions since at least the mid-1970s when former Gov. Ella Grasso (D-Windsor Locks) sought a 40-hour work week.

Handler, who lives in New Canaan, said with a wage freeze the short-term savings figure is probably valid but he questions whether the long-term projection will come true even though the state employees will now contribute 4 percent to their pensions instead of the 0-2 percent they contributed before the most recent contract was ratified.

Regardless, he said “it is in their best interests to renegotiate since the current system is not sustainable with only 35 percent of the pensions paid for. For some of them, there will not be enough money to pay their pensions when they retire.”

And that comes after Malloy has been praised by state Comptroller Kevin Lembo (D-Guilford) for putting more money into the pension system than any governor in the last generation.

Connecticut’s budgets have had regular projected deficits since the 2008 national financial crisis.

Handler, a former portfolio manager, concurs that Malloy has done a better job of putting money into the pension system, but declares that state officials made the wrong decision early this year to stretch out the pension payments by pushing at least $13.8 billion to beyond 2032, placing them on a future generation.

He also criticized the decision to allocate nearly $50 million in the state’s two-year, $40.2 billion budget to rescue Hartford from bankruptcy when the capital city’s pension system is “almost as bad as the state’s.”

Handler, who has served in his current position under former Republican Mayor Michael Pavia and Democratic incumbent David Martin, said he opposes Malloy’s efforts to get the municipalities to pay one-third of the teacher pension costs, an expense that the state has had since 1939.

“It would just increase local property taxes,” he said in a phone interview.

However, he does support the governor’s call for eliminating the car tax since it is difficult to collect.

“We spend too much time chasing down people,” Handler explained.

Handler said, if needed, he would support consolidation of some public college campuses if it was fiscally sound and the state could continue providing opportunities to every potential student. Former Webster Bank economist Nick Perna of Ridgefield told CTMirror earlier this year that Connecticut has “a boat load” of college campuses.

Farmington Bank economist Donald Klepper-Smith has bemoaned that Connecticut is the only New England state not to recapture all of the jobs it lost in the 2008 recession.

Handler said one major obstacle is an outdated transportation system.

“What would change the face of Connecticut is if you could reduce [the train commute] time from New Haven to Bridgeport to Stamford to New York City,” he declared.

“The state needs to make a major infrastructure improvement,” said Handler. “Train service in the state hasn’t improved in the last 20 years. Think of what it could do for Connecticut’s economy if you could get from Stamford to Grand Central in 30 to 35 minutes instead of the low 50s.”

Malloy, who will not seek a third term next year, has said that the commutation rates at the Stamford train station increased nearly 200 percent during his tenure as mayor from 1995 to 2009. The city became Connecticut’s corporate center and ranked fourth in the world in financial services. It is now third in the state in population, recently surpassing Hartford, which is fourth.

People working in Manhattan or Westchester County enjoy living in Stamford and those residing in the Big Apple have found jobs at the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) in the downtown area of Connecticut's waterfront enclave.

There’s apparently room for another boom. Economists Chang-Tai Hsich of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the University of California-Berkeley wrote in The New York Times in September that the economies of Britain and Japan “are significantly larger because of the transportation network,” which features high-speed rail.

The economists stated that “local housing regulations smother the U.S. economy.”

Real estate prices in the Silicon Valley resemble the MegaMillions jackpot. However, high-speed rail in California’s Central Valley will make it possible for workers to travel from Bakersfield and Fresno to annex the high paying jobs at Apple, Google, Wells Fargo and YouTube, Hsich and Moretti wrote.

In 2015, as Malloy began his second term, he called for a $100 billion infrastructure improvement plan over 30 years and appointed a committee, chaired by former state Rep. Cameron Staples (D-New Haven), to find a way to fund it.

State Rep. Steve Harding (D-107) of Brookfield said with spending and bonding caps in place from the bipartisan state budget that was recently approved - but is already out of balance for the fiscal year ending in June - and little support in the General Assembly for tolls, congestive pricing or higher taxes, he believes Malloy’s goal will be difficult to achieve.

Harding, who supports Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, said even with the money, high-speed rail faces obstacles since some residents in status symbol land don’t want the character of their towns disturbed.

Regarding the campaign, Handler said over three months he has raised $150,000 toward the $250,000 in contributions of $100 or less that would be needed to qualify for a $1.4 million grant from the state Citizen Election Program for the August primary. He said he expects to reach that goal within months.

In addition to Boughton, who is making his third run for governor, the potential field includes state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides of Derby, state Rep. Prasad Srinivasan of Glastonbury, Greenwich hedge fund manager David Stemerman, state Sen Toni Boucher of Wilton, departing Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst, former UBS executive Bob Stefanowski of Madison, former West Hartford town council member and former petitioning gubernatorial candidate Joe Visconti, former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker of Bridgeport, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti, technology executive and former congressional candidate Steve Obsitnik of Westport, former U.S. Senate and Secretary of the State candidate Peter Lumaj of Fairfield and former Coventry Town Council member Micah Welintukonis.

Handler has the support of Connecticut’s most storied former high school athlete – Stamford’s Bobby Valentine, the Sacred Heart University athletic director and two-sport scholastic All-American who managed the Mets to the 2000 World Series and also managed the Red Sox and Rangers.

During New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s five campaign trips to Connecticut in 2014 for Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley of Greenwich, one was at Valentine’s sports restaurant in Stamford and the other was at his facility in Windsor Locks.

“He’s the most generous person I’ve met,” Handler said of Valentine, who hosted a campaign fund-raiser recently at his home. “People say he can’t say ‘No’ to anybody.”