Politics & Government
Harding wants to freeze state employee wages for at least two years
State Senate Republican Leader says it is becoming more difficult to balance the budget
By Scott Benjamin
BROOKFIELD – He arrived at the State Capitol just months before then-Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Essex) signed a budget that raised taxes by $1.3 billion.
For a while after that, Malloy even had to make emergency cuts to mitigate shortfalls.
Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Nearly 10 years later, his workout at the Green Knoll branch of the Regional YMCA of Western Connecticut has concluded and Stephen Harding is wearing a suit and tie as the late-morning sun peaks through a window in the lobby.
Now, at age 37, he has graduated from being a first-year state representative to becoming the state Senate Republican leader.
Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) has underscored that the state has had six successive balanced budgets.
Lamont recently told David Kreschevsky of The Hartford Business Journal that for decades Connecticut state government “stuck a lot on the credit card — that was everything from bonding to pensions — and it was terrible.” Lamont said his top priority is “an honestly balanced budget.”
“The Democrats increased spending more than I would have,” Harding (R-30) of Brookfield commented. “[Balancing the budget] is going to be troublesome to do.”
Harding, whose 18-municiplaity district stretches from Brookfield to North Canaan, contends that the circumstances have changed.
“They’ve [the Democratic majority] had an economy prior to the pandemic with the stock market rising,” he remarked in an interview with Patch.com. “That was saving us and then the flow of federal relief after COVID. We now have to balance a state without a lot of additional spending from federal funds and an increasing stock market.”
Budget reporter Keith Phaneuf of CT Mirror recently wrote that, “Lamont’s budget director, Jeffrey Beckham, called [emergency budget reductions] necessary given projections that government spending will shatter approved limits by nearly $400 million this fiscal year, with more than half that problem caused by Medicaid.”
Harding said with the governor preparing a budget that will be presented in February and the state employees’ contract currently being renegotiated, the time has come to “find efficiencies in our state government. I think one place to look is the SEBAC [State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition] agreements.”
Harding said the state workers have received a collective 33 percent salary boost over the last six years.
No private-sector worker has “seen the kind of compound increases that the state employees have received,” he exclaimed.
“I think remaining consistent on a non-increase salary for at least the next two years is financially prudent. I think it would go a long way toward finding efficiencies in our fixed costs,” Harding commented.
Greenwich investor and investment columnist Red Jahncke has stated that Malloy did impose a wage freeze while he was in office.
Said Harding, “The governor should be a good negotiator for the taxpayers. Doing what is best for the taxpayers instead of what is best for the unions or for his party.”
However, the collective bargaining unit leaders have indicated that the state employees already have made major concessions. A 2017 study by a consultant to the state Office of Policy & Management, the governor’s budget arm, indicated that between 2017 and 2037, concessions by those workers will save the state $24 billion. The collective bargaining leaders have indicated that no insurance executive or hedge fund trader has made that commitment to help the taxpayers.
Harding commented, “It comes down to what the taxpayers can afford,” since they have paid for the increased salaries over the last six years.
Additionally, Harding said that that now, more than two years after the pandemic, state employees should be doing less work from home and more from the state offices.
“Only coming in once or twice a week [to the office] is unacceptable. There is something to be said for in-person work,” said the Senate GOP leader, who emphasized that “many of those state employees are hard-working individuals.”
Harding said the move to provide a hybrid pension program for hires instead of a defined benefits package in the 2017 state employee contract negotiations has saved the state money. However, he said the goal should be to have an even less-expensive defined contributions program for the new hires.
On a separate subject, in January, Connecticut will have a minimum wage of $16.35 an hour – a more than $6 an hour increase from 2017 when it went to $10.10 an hour.
In a new book, “Pay The People,” wealthy businessmen John Driscoll and Morris Pearl argue that even companies benefit from higher wages for the working class.
They stated that,” Seventy percent of the U.S. economy is based on consumer demand, but almost 40 percent of Americans make less than the cost of living. Nearly all the economic gains made in the last several decades have gone to the top 1 percent and Wall Street, while working families whose spending habits drive the economy have fallen further behind, and our economy has suffered as a result.”
Harding said he questions some of the benefits of a higher minimum wage.
Regarding the position that higher wages result in more income that the working class will spend while shopping at small businesses, Harding commented, “I understand that perspective. There is nothing stopping the business executives from paying their employees more. They have the power to raise the wages. I think when government gets in the way; study after study shows that the higher minimum wage lowers the work force. From an economic perspective, I don’t see the benefit of government intervening in terms of continuing to increase the minimum wage.”
Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution wrote in her 2016 book, “Why Presidents Fail,” that American needs managerial presidents.
In applying that formula to a governor, Harding said that Lamont “has a lot of staff members that have a good idea on how to handle issues that face the state. They have insight into the issues. “He is pretty good at having people in the right roles.”
Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, a former White House speech writer, has said that, presidents should be “big and visionary and wise. A great leader has more in common with an artist than an economist. They are there to see it big.” She added that major legislation should have bipartisan support or it will always be considered controversial, such as Democratic former President Barack Obama’s health care plan, which was approved on a party-line vote.
Using that same criterion for a governor, Harding said regarding Lamont: “I don’t think he is one to have sweeping ideas. One of the things that he did near the beginning of his administration was proposing tolls, which was opposed by many people across the state, and he eventually abandoned the idea.”
He noted that most recently Lamont opted to abandon his goal of having the state convert to electric vehicles by 2035.
Harding remarked, “He has taken up larger ideas when there was a lot of opposition to them.”
However, he said that in other areas, Lamont has been bipartisan.
“I think he has been very open to ideas from Republicans,” Harding commented. “There is a willingness to have those discussions.”
“In some respects he has taken a firm stance [with Democratic legislators] with the guard rails,” said Harding regarding the fiscal spending and volatility caps that were enacted in 2017 and have been credited with improving the state government’s financial condition.
He also credited Lamont with being more frugal on the state’s debt load than Malloy had been. Harding said Lamont has even sometimes skipped holding the monthly state Bond Commission meetings. However, he praised Malloy for trimming the full-time state work force by 13.1 percent over eights years, making it a leaner operation.
On another topic, Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, a Greenwich High School graduate, wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column: “There is a new rising American electorate. This [Republican] coalition is diverse and working-class. It’s out of step with the identity politics of the left, seeking a return to common sense and economic stability.”
Harding concurs, saying that despite losing one seat in the state Senate and four in the state House in the November 5 presidential year election, the Republicans are attracting a larger share of the working class.
“You’re seeing Republicans outperforming results for decades in Connecticut,” he said, particularly in the cities and among minorities. “I think you see that the Republican message is resonating with the multi-racial working-class people of the state,” since the GOP is committed to lowering taxes and reducing business regulations.
Harding said he was disappointed that state Sen. Lisa Seminara (R-8) of Avon narrowly lost her bid for a second term, but noted that “people in Hartford [at the State Capitol] were predicting that instead of the 11 senators that the GOP would have eight or nine senators when the regular session starts on January 8. Four of its incumbents ran for re-election after only garnering 51 percent or less of the vote in 2020. Three of those four GOP senators prevailed.
However, state Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury, the deputy speaker pro tempore, told Patch.com in October that Connecticut Democrats have been supportive of the working class through a higher minimum wage, paid family medical leave and an income tax cut for the lower and middle income, but not for the wealthy.
Said Harding, “What he is discounting is the rest of the decade previous to that when Democrats were implementing record tax increases that were driving small businesses out of the state. I think they promote policies on regulations that hurt small businesses.”
Harding said for the under-40-year-old voters, the only time they have experienced a strong economy as adults was in the period shortly before the start of the pandemic in 2020. He said that they have suffered through the 2008 Great Recession, the shutdown during the pandemic and the current high inflation under Democratic President Joe Biden.
State Rep. Patrick Callahan (R-108) of New Fairfield told Patch.com in August that administrators at Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) told local legislators this summer that the school needs $80 million in repairs. Godfrey has said he hopes that bonding for some of those projects could start in 2025.
“I think we need to be smart about capital expenditures,” said Harding. “I’m always going to advocate for a university in my part of the state,” since he has a number of constituents attending WCSU.
However, Harding said the perception regarding the value of a college education has changed from 20 years ago when he was a senior at Brookfield High School.
He said that may partly be attributable to the number of college graduates who have struggled to pay their student loans.
“We have moved to a model where it is not so necessary to have a college degree,” Harding remarked. “In the early 2000s, students in high school were encouraged to go to college regardless of their skill set. I think we’ve seen a fortunate thing in recent years, where students are evaluated one by one. It doesn’t always have to be college.”
Resources:
https://ctmirror.org/2024/11/15/ct-projected-budget-surplus-spending/
https://ctmirror.org/2024/11/27/ct-bonded-debt-report/
https://news.wfu.edu/2016/09/09/peggy-noonan-offers-insiders-look-at-presidents-and-leadership/
Larry Dorman phone interview, Patch.com, August, 2018.
https://www.the-red-line.com/2024/09/05/time-for-a-state-employee-wage-freeze
https://www.hartfordbusiness.c...
https://ctmirror.org/2024/12/02/ct-reports-progress-on-underfunded-state-employee-pension-funds/
https://ctmirror.org/2015/01/2...
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/alumnus-callahan-says-wcsu-needs-money-overdue-repairs
https://www.courant.com/2024/12/05/opinion-active-ct-state-employees-and-their-generous-benefits/
Elaine Kamarck, “Why Presidents Fail, Brookings Institution Press, 2016.
