Professor insists Lamont has lacked consistent message on tolls

By Scott Benjamin

Southern Connecticut State University Political Science and Urban Affairs Professor Jonathan Wharton says if Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) doesn’t get his tolls plan enacted it “absolutely” could become a watershed issue that might hurt Democratic legislators running in the November 3 election.

“There has been a lack of consistency and a lack of messaging from the governor,” he said in a phone interview.

The No Tolls group has held the rallies and also has had a daily presence at the state Capitol, according to CT NewsJunkie.

They’ve had the momentum.

That is in sharp contrast to Lamont’s 2006 U.S. Senate campaign, when he was described later by CT Mirror as “a rock star riding a wave” with a large band of bloggers helping him overcome an early 46-point deficit in the polls as he defeated incumbent U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Stamford in the Democratic primary. Lieberman mounted a third-party campaign and prevailed in the general election.

What happened to the 2006 wave of Nedroots when reporters covering Lamont read his campaign blog before they read their own newspapers?

Now the reporters wait for the state Senate Democratic caucus to announce whether they can garner enough support to get a toll plan approved.

Lamont has supported various tolls plans since the 2018 campaign. The month after he formally announced his bid for the Democratic nomination he endorsed a plan for all vehicles. During the primary and general election campaigns he said he would only toll commercial trucks.

In February 2019 he wrote a column for CT Hearst about an ambitious plan for tolls that never came to a vote and ignited a No Tolls organization. There also is a pro-tolls organization.

Over the summer, Lamont began developing a proposal for a limited number of tolls with 14 gantries designed to largely fund improvements to nearby roads and bridges addressing traffic congestion choke points.

News reports indicated that the state Senate Democrats couldn’t provide enough support to get that plan enacted.

During 2019 Lamont rejected plans by the Republican legislators to fund the transportation improvements through bonding and, more recently, to use some of the rainy day fund.

Since late November, Lamont, who was elected in 2018 by about 45,000 votes, has touted a plan to toll only commercial trucks and he and Democratic legislative leaders announced they planned to send it to a vote during a special session in January.

State Rep. Bob Godfrey (D-110) of Brookfield told Patch.com in late December that he doesn’t think that the governor has enough votes in either the state House or the Senate to get the plan approved.

Godfrey also said the tolls could be ruled unconstitutional in a federal case related to the commercial tolls that were instituted in Rhode Island.

Connecticut had tolls along the Connecticut Turnpike, Interstate-95 and sections of the Schuyler Merritt and Wilbur Cross parkways until the late 1980s. A group known as “Banish All Tolls” sought remove them because of the unfairness to residents in Southwestern Connecticut who traveled through them regularly, according to Sacred Heart professor Gary Rose’s 2019 book, “Connecticut In Crisis” (Academica, 302 Pages).

Rose wrote that there also were environmental concerns regarding emissions from idling vehicles and then-Gov. William O’Neill (D-East Hampton) re-evaluated the need for the tools after deadly accidents in 1983 and 1985. The state removed the last of the toll plazas in 1989.

However, state Sen. Alexandra Bergman (D-36) of Greenwich told Patch.com in 2018 that 42 states currently have tolls. Rose wrote last year that other states are considering them.

In his book Rose quoted Carl Davis, the research director for the Institute on Taxation and Policy, as saying “I think states over time have lost hope in the federal government enacting a long term infrastructure package. And so they’ve taken matters in their own hands and boosted funding on their own.”

However, Rose wrote that Connecticut remains divided on installing tolls.

Wharton, who grew up in West Hartford, said, “The tolls issue could be damaging for the Democrats who are up for re-election in 2020,” since either there will be opposition to the installation of even the 12 gantries or if no plan gets approved there will be questions as to why the General Assembly and the governor can’t address the chronic traffic congestion across the state.

Rose stated in his book that a 2017 report from the American Society of Engineers found that 57 percent of Connecticut’s roads were in poor condition, the highest percentage of any state.

Bob Stefanowski of Madison, the former General Electric and UBS executive who was the Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2018, recently told WTIC Radio that Lamont should have each of his commissioners reduce their budget by one percent, which would provide more than the $187 million that the governor has said the commercial truck tolls would generate during the first year.

“It’s a start,” said Wharton.

However, the professor said it probably would be difficult to accomplish a budget reduction consecutively over a number of years if there is a national recession.

For example, CT Mirror recently reported that Melissa McCaw, the secretary of the state Office of Policy & Management, the governor’s budget arm, has called on commissioners to start reducing the budget to offset a projected deficit for the fiscal year that ends on June 30.

“The state needs to be thinking about transportation with a vision of five years and 10 years,” Wharton added.

He said the Democrats also may be vulnerable over voter concerns about an economy that has been sluggish since the 2008 Great Recession.

“The Republicans are also going to be talking about why so many people are leaving Connecticut,” said Wharton, who formerly served as the Republican Town Committee chairman in New Haven.

Semi-retired Liberty Bank economist Donald Klepper-Smith told Patch.com last July that Connecticut is losing a net of 428 people per month, while South Carolina is adding 943 new residents monthly.

CT Hearst business columnist Dan Haar stated in January that Connecticut’s economy shrank during the decade of the 2010s.

The Boston Globe reported in 2016 that since many companies want to locate to large-city innovation hub – such as the Route 128 Corridor near Boston - suburban Connecticut – which doesn’t even have a city with 150,000 people – is at a disadvantage.

However, some observers have noted that Lamont has taken steps to improve Connecticut’s economy through his “debt diet,” an effort to reduce bond appropriations annually by $700 million. He also has attracted some high-profile former business executives to the Department of Economic & Community Development, including Commissioner David Lehman, who formerly worked at Goldman Sachs.

The governor also has appointed a Workforce Council and named aerospace engineer Colin Cooper as state’s chief manufacturing officer.

Lamont has said since the 2018 campaign that there are manufacturing jobs in the state that go unfilled because there are not enough qualified applicants.

Rose of Sacred Heart told Patch.com last August that until the sales tax and income tax are reduced Connecticut’s economy will probably remain sluggish.

The sales tax is currently at 6.35 percent and the income tax ranges from 3 percent to 6.99 percent.

Said Wharton, “That's clearly something that the Republicans have suggested and proposed.” He said that he agrees in principal with the concept.

“The only concern is that the state government has relied on the income and sales tax for so long and for so much of the state budget, how sustainable would it be to reduce those taxes but address the ongoing budgetary concerns facing the state in the short and long terms?” he added. “Something would have to increase to replace the lost revenue. Maybe an increase elsewhere like in gas or sin taxes or other areas>”

“This is why a growing economy in the long-term is imperative to the state,” Wharton continued. “A state economy that has experienced 4% employment growth (vs. 15% nationally) in the last decade, needs to be addressed as well.”

Regarding the Lamont’s first year in office, Wharton said he has suffered from being ““new to state government.”

Wharton, who formerly taught Political Science at Stevens Tech in New Jersey, said that Phil Murphy, who was elected governor of the Garden State in 2017 after a career at Goldman Sachs, also “is struggling” through his first term.”

Politico.com reported last September that Murphy “came under fire from lawmakers for being aloof, eschewing frequent face to face meetings in favor of top-down political messaging meant to persuade lawmakers to support his progressive agenda.”

Wharton said Lamont has been criticized for being too flexible in his positions on issues.

“I think he needs to be more assertive,” remarked Wharton, the author in 2013 of “A Post-Racial Change Is Gonna Come: Newark, Cory Booker and the Transformation of Urban America” (Palgrave Macmillan, 270 Pages).

He added, “I hear it constantly from lobbyists, from legislators about where is his drive and determination.”

On another topic, Wharton acknowledged that there was some disconnection between the performance of former Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Essex), Lamont’s immediate predecessor, and his polls numbers, which were among the worst of any governor in the country.

Malloy was criticized for his tax increases in 2011 and 2015.

However, over eight years Malloy, who is now the chancellor of Maine’s public higher education system, reduced the full-time work force by 13.1 percent; was the first Connecticut governor in generations to fully fund the pensions for both the state employees and the public school teachers; got concessions to get new state employees into a less-expensive hybrid pension plan; was a leader on the minimum wage – so much so that former Democratic President Barack Obama came to New Britain in 2014 to note Connecticut’s accomplishments.

Also, Malloy had a criminal justice reform package that was profiled on CBS’ “60 Minutes” shortly after he left office; and was praised by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) in the first Democratic presidential debate last June for his gun reform package, which has lowered the murder rate in Connecticut.

“I think the problem for Malloy was that he was not a back-slapper and wasn’t a warm person,” said Wharton. “I think that in part it was his temperament that caused some of his poor poll numbers.”

“However, he was very effective in pushing and prodding his proposals through,” he added. “I give him credit for that. But he lacked the charisma that people like to see in their governor.”