Politics & Government
Kushner proud of Paid Family Medical Leave Act
Democratic state senator faces Republican Michelle Coelho in 24th District election
By Scott Benjamin
DANBURY – State Sen. Julie Kushner (D-24) says in four years one of her “greatest accomplishments” is the Paid Family Medical Leave Act that she helped author, and which has “touched the most people.”
“It is probably the biggest social insurance program that we’ve put in place in many decades,” said the longtime Danbury resident who faces Republican Michelle Coelho, a member of the Danbury Board of Education, in the November 8 election.
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“So many people have taken advantage of it,” Kushner remarked in an interview with Patch.com.
CT Hearst has reported that, “According to the CT Paid Leave Authority, employees and self-employed individuals have been making a contribution of ‘one half of one percent of wages’ to the CT Paid Leave Authority Trust Fund since the start of 2021. For example, if a person earns $60,000 in one year, the contribution to the paid leave fund annually would be $300. “
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“The benefits are available for those starting or expanding a family via birth, adoption or foster care; those who have serious health conditions or are caring for someone with such conditions or are caring for family members injured during active military duty,” CT Hearst continued “Additionally, those affected by family violence may be eligible to receive up to 12 days of paid leave for psychological or medical care, to relocate or participate in legal activities related to family violence.”
Kushner said she recently met a woman who “couldn’t afford to take time off from work to have surgery. This year, she had the surgery” as a result of Paid Family Medical Leave.
However, Eric Gjede, the vice president of public policy with the Connecticut Business & Industry
Association, the state’s largest business organization, wrote in CT Hearst earlier this year that, “An employee earning a median family income of $78,450 contributes $392 annually to the paid-leave fund and is eligible to receive up to $9,360 in yearly benefits.”
He added, “At that level, the contributions of 24 workers are needed to pay the benefits of a single person. The paid-leave authority projects 85,000 annual claims.”
Gjede continued, “So, if every one of those 85,000 claimants makes the median income and collects full paid-leave benefits, over 2 million employees must pay into the system to fund their claims. But as of November 2021, there were only 1.39 million private-sector workers in the state.”
Kushner said that legislators “used a lot of experts and looked at what other states had done” as they developed the plan, which was approved in 2019 and began processing claims this last January.
She noted that a public authority administers the program and meets monthly, and has actuaries and auditors that are monitoring its progress.
“Not only has it been paying out benefits, but it will continue to pay out benefits and remain strong,” Kushner commented.
In a statement to Patch.com, CT Paid Leave wrote, "The most recent analysis, completed in July 2022 by Spring Consulting Group, concluded that the CT Paid Leave program met its solvency targets, and that the CT Paid Leave fund balance is projected to grow through at least June 2025."
The statement added, "Furthermore, Mr. Gjede's quoted analysis assumes that each person applying for CT Paid Leave is using the full 12-week allotment and receiving the maximum benefit amount of $780/week, when in actuality the average leave length is 6.79 weeks, and the average benefit amount is $562/week. The leadership and staff of the CT Paid Leave Authority are committed to continued fiscal responsibility for the funds provided by Connecticut workers. As such, the CT Paid Leave Board of Directors has voted to maintain the contribution rates at current levels for 2023."
Inflation is higher than at any time since Robin Yount garnered his first American League Most Valuable Player award.
For months, Republicans have called for lowering the income tax rate from five percent to four percent on people earning less than $75,000 annually; lowering the sales tax from 6.35 percent to 5.99 percent; eliminating the diesel tax; and stopping the implementation of the highway tax.
“We have to replace the revenue,” said Kushner. “I’d like them to say where we should cut spending.”
She said that in some areas the state needs to spend more money, such as making the child care investment approved this spring “permanent”
Patch.com has reported that an additional $183 million was approved in the revised $24.2 billion state budget that Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed.
“Having affordable child care is the underpinning of everything,” Kushner said regarding the need for families to effectively function.
The minimum wage in Connecticut is scheduled to increase from $14 to $15 an hour next July. With inflation surging, should it go to $16 an hour?
“I’d love to,” Kushner said.
Is it realistic?
“Absolutely,” Kushner exclaimed.
The September 2021 Truth In Accounting Report ranks Connecticut last among the 50 states in fiscal health, noting that the pensions for the state employees are only 43 percent funded, well below the 80 percent mark that is considered “good.”
“I think we’re on the right track,” Kushner remarked regarding fiscal action taken during the 2022 regular session of the General Assembly. “I do believe that we will be fully funded, and we have a structure to do that.”
CT Mirror budget reporter Keith Phaneuf wrote earlier this year that Lamont “and the General Assembly have tried to reverse that. Besides making the full required pension contributions over the past three fiscal years, they’ve earmarked an unprecedented $5.4 billion in surpluses to accelerate retirement of pension debt. That includes $61 million in 2020, $1.6 billion in 2021, and a whopping $3.7 billion left over from the fiscal year that closed June 30.”
He stated, “Those supplemental payments — and the potential investment earnings they will generate over the next two-and-a-half decades — mean the state should be able to shave $443 million off its annual pension bill by July 2023, according to a new analysis from Cavanaugh-Macdonald Consulting of Kennesaw, Ga., the state’s pension actuaries.”
Phaneuf added, “But whether all of that savings actually translates into new investments, tax cuts — or both — may well hinge on the tumbling stock market. As the value of Connecticut’s pension fund investments shrink, required annual contributions to the system traditionally rise.”
Kushner credited the state employee collective bargaining units for making concessions in the 2017 agreement that - according to a consultant for the state Office of Policy & Management, the governor’s budget arm - would save the state $24 billion between 2017 and 2037.
“I think our state employees stepped up at a time when we needed it most,” she said.
On a separate subject, state Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Danbury said in a phone interview with Patch.com that “Julie is second to none when it comes to constituent service,”
In an e-mail message to Patch.com, 24th District Democratic State Central Committee member Deb:Gogliettino stated, “You cannot go to the local grocery store with Julie without her connecting to workers and learning how they are and how things are with their families.”
Kushner said her most ambitious constituent outreach came when she and a team of campaign volunteers made checking calls to constituents at the height of the pandemic.
“We didn’t know what to expect if you go back to March and April of 2020,” she explained. “I think we were all taken by surprise as we were so isolated in our homes.”
She said they assisted constituents in getting goods from local food pantries and unemployment compensation paper work.
Godfrey also commended Kushner for organizing phone banks this spring to generate support for the $208 million education referendum in Danbury, which featured the 1,400-student Career Academy, which will be constructed at the former Cartus site. The referendum question was approved with 86 percent of the tally.
On higher education, did Democratic former Gov. Dannel Malloy and the General Assembly make the best decision in 2011 to establish the Board of Regents?
Kushner said that is difficult for her to determine since she wasn’t in the Legislature at that time.
There have been continuing conflicts between the Board of Regents and the state employee collective bargaining units at the 17 campuses over restructuring and expanded online learning.
Has the Board of Regents been effective?
“I don’t think that we have been as effective as we need to be in making sure that we’re supporting our institutions of higher learning,” Kushner replied.
Godfrey told Patch.com in June that Western Connecticut State University (WCSU) in Danbury and the other four-year campuses in the Board of Regents system have become “priced beyond what working families can afford.”
Josh Moody of Inside Higher Ed reported in June that under former WCSU President John Clark, “99 percent of university reserves” had been “depleted in recent years.”
More recently, Paul Beran, the interim president at WCSU, told Moody of Inside Higher Ed that “this institution can’t keep doing business as usual and maintain viability. System leadership and the Board [of Regents] understand that.”
Apparently, that might indicate down-sizing.
Said Kushner, “From my standpoint that is going to set us back.”
In 2018, Kushner was the first Democrat to capture the 24th District seat since Danbury’s Jim Maloney won his fourth term in 1992. Four years later Maloney was elected to the first of three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from the Fifth District.
Godfrey said the most recent reapportionment has turned it from a Republican-leaning district to a toss-up district as Sherman and a section of Bethel have been jettisoned. Along with all of Danbury, the 24th District still includes a portion of New Fairfield and now has a part of Ridgefield.
Danbury Republican Town Committee Chairman Michael Safranek said in a phone interview with Patch.com that Kushner has been too ideological.
“I think the 24th District is much more conservative than she thinks,” he explained.
Kushner said she has worked collaboratively with Democrats and Republicans in the General Assembly, adding that she appreciates the General Assembly’s joint committee structure in which House and Senate members serve on the same panel and that unlike Congress they don’t have to reconcile differences through conference committee.
She said there has been considerable bipartisanship on public health and education issues, but “not so much in labor” legislation.
On another topic, a 2017 engineering report indicated that Connecticut had the worst maintained roads in the nation. The highways have been congested for decades.
What will the federal government’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure program – reportedly the biggest investment since the Eisenhower Interstate Highway Program in the 1950s – do for the 24th District?
Kushner said there is, among other things, $10 million in planning for improvements to Interstae-84.
She added, “It also will help our state if we invest more in public transit.”
Lamont’s signature proposal during 2019, his first year in office, was to implement highway tolls. It never got to a vote in the General Assembly.
A 2015 ad-hoc committee report called for $100 billion in spending over 30 years. The state has made little progress on accomplishing that goal. It appears that the federal infrastructure plan will only pay for a small portion of that.
Would Connecticut be better off if the Lamont tolls plan had been approved in 2019?
“There is opposition in this district to tolls, so I don’t know that we would be better off,” said Kushner.
“People were very fearful of the costs,” she said. “It became very contentious.”
Kushner formerly served as the director of the United Auto Workers Region 9A – which covered the New England states, Puerto Rico and part of New York state.
In 2011, former Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson wrote about the decline in unions under a headline that read: “Is Organized Labor Obsolete?”
He noted that in 2010 only 6.9 percent of private sector workers belonged to a collective bargaining unit, a “stunning” drop from a generation earlier.
Kushner said that trend change changed.
“I think there is tremendous interest among young people in unions today,” she said. “You see it at Amazon, Starbucks, you see it at fast food,”
Speaking of young people, Harvard pollster John Della Volpe wrote earlier this year in The New York Times that the 22-year-old and under voters are pessimistic about the future after experiencing the Great Recession, the pandemic and school shootings.
“It’s hard to get to young voters, they’re not picking up the phone,” Kushner commented. “However, they are passionate about the environment. They are passionate about stopping gun violence. They’re passionate about retaining individual rights such as access to abortion.”
Which political figures does she most admire?
“I’ve never stopped to think about that kind of question,” said Kushner.
Ned Lamont?
“I think Ned is doing a great job,” she said. “I have always found him to be accessible.”
Barack Obama?
“Obama was transformative, there is no doubt about it,” Kushner commented.
She added state Senate President Pro-Tempore Martin Looney (D-New Haven) to the list, saying that he is “very dedicated.’
How has Danbury changed in the 29 years since she moved to the city?
“There is a lot more going on in Danbury,” she remarked. “The restaurants in Danbury are amazing. There is such diversity. You can have a different kind of food each night.”
Resources:
https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/Paid-family-leave-Connecticut-how-it-works-16748927.php
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...
https://patch.com/connecticut/...
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/fazio-supports-trimming-sales-tax-inflation-surges
Interview, Julie Kushner, Patch.com, October 11, 2022.
Phone interview, Bob Godfrey, Patch.com, October 3, 2022.
Phone interview, Michael Safranek, Patch.com, October 10, 2022.
E-mail statement, Deb:Gogliettino, Patch.com, October 9, 2022.
https://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Danbury-voters-approve-208M-educational-bond-17226380.php
