Healy says state must resolve unfunded liabilities

By Scott Benjamin

BETHEL – Before “social distancing” became part of the daily vernacular there were No Tolls rallies.

Before Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) held briefings on Covid-19, it appeared his unsuccessful plans to install toll gantries might become the defining topic of his first two years in office.

Early this year, state Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury and Southern Connecticut State University Political Science and Urban Affairs Professor Jonathan Wharton told Patch.com it could become the “watershed” issue of the 2020 elections.

Lamont campaigned in 2018 on placing tolls just on big trucks, reversed course in February 2019 and embraced a plan for tolls on all vehicles. Then he went back to the big trucks plan with a limited number of gantries.

By late February he accepted he didn’t have the votes in the General Assembly to get his program approved and said the state would bond for the transportation improvements.

The only public meeting on the governor’s plan was in Westport, a part of the 26th state Senate District, which was co-hosted by state Sen. Will Haskell (D-New Canaan), who had endorsed the trucks-only tolls.

Two months later Kim Healy of Wilton, a certified public accountant and former auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers, entered the race for the Republican nomination for the state Senate seat and about two months after that she collected about two-thirds of the delegates at the GOP convention. As the endorsed candidate, she will face former state Rep. Will Duff (R-2) of Bethel in the August 11 primary in a district that includes all of Wilton, Ridgefield and Redding, most of Westport and parts of Weston, New Canaan and Bethel. Duff is a former candidate for first selectman of Bethel and served on the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Education in that town.

Healy said, “I am not opposed in theory to tolls but our citizens are already taxed at one of the highest rates in the U.S. when you include income, property, sales taxes, etc.”

“But we need to fix our fiscal health in Connecticut first before adding any further burden onto the citizens of Connecticut,” she said in an interview. “ I sat through the one public meeting that was held in Westport about tolls and frankly the numbers that were provided did not add up to convince me that tolls should be even considered at this time.”

“The trucks-only option concerned me due to the ongoing litigation in Rhode Island as well as from the testimony I heard that trucks from Connecticut would have to pass the added cost to the consumer and therefore cost us more to live here in Connecticut,” said Healy, who along with her husband, is raising four children ranging in age from 13 to 22.

Truck companies and Cumberland Farms have filed litigation over the trucks-only tolls in Rhode Island.

Healy remarked, “I prefer Lamont’s current plan to bond infrastructure as it evens out the payments for the road, bridge and other work over the life of the investment.”

Haskell wrote last year in a column for Patch.com that, “Foregoing tolls and borrowing the full amount necessary for improvements would send us back into a financial spiral.”

Healy said Connecticut must first address its unfunded liabilities.

The 2018 report from the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness stated that the pensions for the state employees are only 29 percent funded. In 2017 the Volcker Alliance gave the state a grade of ‘D’ in managing its legacy costs.

Patch.com has reported that in 2019 during a forum sponsored by the Wilton League of Women Voters, CT Mirror Budget Reporter Keith Phaneuf said, "The biggest problems, if you go back in time, is that we didn't save responsibly and now 85 percent of the costs on state employee fringe benefits are related to the sins of the past. The other states are now laughing at us.”

In July The Wall Street Journal referred to Connecticut as “one of the nation’s most troubled states.”

Healy declared, “We need to talk about the unfunded liabilities. I think the unions need to come to table and figure it out as well. Let’s get around the table and come up with a solution. We have to do that. I don’t see a future in Connecticut if we don’t.”

“I don’t think that there are any senators that have my background,” she said of her work as a financial auditor.

Healy said the state government should adhere to “zero based budgeting” and that, where possible, the full-time state work force should be trimmed beyond the 13.1 percent reduction made during the eight years that former Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Essex) was in office.

She also questioned why the General Assembly establishes the budget appropriations “before they know how they’re going to get the revenue. I’ve never heard of that.”

Healy said she supports the proposal made over the recent gubernatorial elections, first by Republican John McKinney of Fairfield in the 2014 campaign and then by Republican Tim Herbst of Trumbull during the 2018 cycle, to establish an Office of Inspector General in which 10 to 20 forensic auditors with subpoena power would seek to find savings.

She remarked, “I think a lot could come out of that.”

Patch.com has reported that McKinney said in 2009 that during the previous year the federal government spent $1.9 billion on auditors and yielded $9.9 billion in savings from audit reviews and $6.8 billion in investigative recoveries.

Former Republican state Sen. Jamie McLaughlin, who lives in Darien, told Patch.com in 2018 that a large share of Connecticut’s tax revenue comes from nine municipalities in Fairfield County’s Gold Coast. Five of them are in the 26th District – Westport, New Canaan, Redding, Wilton and Weston.

However, as the Boston Globe reported in 2016, millennials, in particular, have been moving to the urban innovation hubs where jobs and public transportation are more plentiful. Donald Klepper-Smith, who chaired former Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s (R-Brookfield) economic team, has indicated that Connecticut is losing a net of about 428 people per week.

But that trend may be changing.

The Wall Street Journal reported on July 12 in a story with a “WESTON” dateline, “It took a global pandemic and a severe economic downturn to do what once seemed impossible: make the Connecticut suburbs cool again.”

“You see the cars with New York plates going 15 miles an hour, stopping at houses with ‘for sale’ sings,” Chris Spaulding the First Selectman of Weston told The Wall Street Journal.

Healy said, “My campaign manager is in real estate and she is really, really busy now.”

Regarding the campaign, Haskell, who has been named to Forbes’ list of “30 Under 30” in Law and Policy, was elected in 2018 at age 22, just months after graduating from Georgetown University. He was the first Democrat to win the seat since 1970, when Jacob Rudolf of Norwalk captured his third term.

Haskell with a large group of volunteers, garnered 53.31 percent of the vote to 46.69 percent for 10-year Republican incumbent Toni Boucher of Wilton, who had been a candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination through the early stages of the 2018 cycle.

A major factor was Haskell taking 64.21 percent of the vote in Westport.

Patch.com has reported that Sacred Heart University Government Department Chairman Gary Rose said following the 2018 race that with Malloy, who was departing office, struggling with lower approval numbers, the election should have resulted in large Republican victories. Instead, Lamont won by 44,000 votes and the Democrats added seats in the state House and Senate.

Rose said the Republicans were stymied by low approval ratings in the state for President Donald Trump.

At the time, he said, "Toni Boucher is not a Trump Republican, she is a moderate.” However, he added that Haskell "reminded voters that she is a Republican and so is Donald Trump."

Healy, who is the treasurer for the Wilton public library, said she believes the legislative races in Connecticut this fall will largely be determined on state and local issues.

She has been meeting voters through scheduled canvassing visits, by telephone, e-mail, Facebook, text-messaging and Zoom sessions.

“Personally, I don’t think [Trump] cares about Connecticut” regarding an economic rescue, Healy said. “It is a blue state.”