Stevenson insists state should have federal transportation talks

By Scott Benjamin

DARIEN – Jayme Stevenson – who has been managing the wealthiest municipality in the nation for seven years and now wants to be Connecticut’s second highest ranking state official – says to reduce the traffic jams on Interstate-95 near Stamford and “the Waterbury mix-master disaster” you’ve got establish a rapport with federal transportation officials.

“Our representatives have not done a good job of building those necessary relationships,” said Stevenson, who has been first selectman of Darien since 2011.

For decades, elected officials have noted that the federal government usually pays for about 80 percent of many major highway projects.

Stevenson is running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in the August 14 primary against state Sen. Joe Markley of Southington, the convention-endorsed candidate, and New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart. The lieutenant governor is paid $110,000 a year.

“We’re probably at the bottom of the list in terms of this federal administration for getting attention for your transportation system,” she said in an interview.

“I have built some of those relationships” by communicating with the Federal Rail Administration on a plan for high-speed rail, said Stevenson, who is chairman of the Western Connecticut Council of Governments – the regional planning agency – and also has been chairman since 2016 of the agency’s Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization, which has provided her with “a front-row seat” on Connecticut’s transportation planning.

She said the high-speed rail plan, which among other things would reduce the 60-minute commute from Darien to Grand Central, would “have impacts on a number of towns along the corridor” so she had federal rail officials come to Darien to meet with the chief elected officials from the municipalities that would be impacted.

Stevenson said high-speed rail could give Connecticut “an above ground subway system” that would allow people living some distance away to have jobs in parts of the state where there are more higher-paying jobs.

Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford), who is not seeking a third term this year, announced last month that the Central Connecticut line connecting New Haven to Hartford and Springfield was the first passenger rail line to open in Connecticut since 1990.

Malloy has made transportation a higher priority during his second term and in 2015 an ad-hoc committee, chaired by former state Rep. Cameron Staples (D-New Haven) developed a 30-year, $100 billion initiative that has been billed as, “Let’s Go CT.”

The governor has said that Connecticut, for example, has lost potential new businesses to Westchester County in New York state and northern New Jersey because of traffic congestion along Interstate-95.

Stevenson said he has reservations about “Let’s Go CT.”

“It seemed as though they decided to throw every idea that you have on transportation on the wall,” she said. “It wasn’t really a plan. There weren’t priorities set out.”

There has been only limited progress on the proposals over the last three years, apparently, in part, because the General Assembly was awaiting approval of a constitutionally-mandated lockbox on the use of state transportation funds. That question will be on the ballot in the November 6 election.

Stevenson, who indicated that she wants to make transportation part of her portfolio if she becomes lieutenant governor, said the lockbox is “not the panacea for our transportation system.”

“How does the lockbox work?” she said. “I haven’t seen any information on the mechanisms for that lockbox.”

Stevenson, who worked as a bond analyst for six years for Standard & Poors, said she agrees with the proposals from some of the five Republican gubernatorial candidates to seek funds from the private sector to help pay for transportation infrastructure improvements.

She has not endorsed any of the five contenders, but said that she is impressed with each of them and is “curious” as to whether GOP voters will select a veteran elected official such as Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton or former Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst or go with a businessman such as former Greenwich hedge funds manager David Stemerman, Westport high-tech innovator Steve Obsitnik or former UBS and GE executive Bob Stefanowski of Madison.

Stevenson objected to Malloy’s decision to seek $10 million through the state bond commission later this month to fund a bond study on electronic tolls.

“I’m a very fiscally conservative person,” she said. “You don’t bond for operating expenses. It’s bad fiscal policy. Plus I’ve yet to see the right business plan for tolls.”

She said since Connecticut’s economy contracted eight percent from 2007 through 2016, according to the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness, “We can’t lead with taxes and tolls.”

Thus, she said she also “at the moment” is “against” increasing the gasoline tax to help fund infrastructure projects until tolls are installed.

Stevenson said she also would want to use her portfolio as lieutenant governor to address opioid addiction.

She said 1,038 Connecticut residents died from the epidemic in 2017 and more people in the nation perished last year from addiction than were killed in the Vietnam War.

Stevenson said it is “widely known to be deceptive advertising by manufacturers and distributors on how addictive opiods really are.”

As lieutenant governor she said she would “bring together the parties – government, non-profit and the private sector - for a more coordinated effort” to address the crisis.

“Every community has been troubled by it in some way,” Stevenson said.

Stevenson said the other major component of her portfolio would be education.

She said that “it is sad and deplorable” that Connecticut has such a large achievement gap between its suburban and city schools.

Stevenson said, “We need to do audits on how that money is spent” in the urban districts, which receive considerable funding through the state Education Cost Sharing funds and have in most instances performed poorly on state standardized tests.

She said she “strongly” supports “school choice.”

“Parents deserve to send their children to their school of choice if their [current] school is failing,” Stevenson said.

She said there is one part of the portfolio of current lieutenant governor Nancy Wyman (D-Tolland) that may have to be put elsewhere.

Stevenson said it may not be best to have the lieutenant governor be in charge of Access Health Care.

“I scratch my head about that,” she said. “Why would you have a politician at the top of an insurance system?”

On another topic, she said she supports the recommendation in the report distributed last March by the state Commission on Fiscal Stability to give the General Assembly greater control in the negotiation of contracts with the state employee collective bargaining units.

“It needs to happen,” said Stevenson. “We can no longer have the governor unilaterally working with the unions making decades-long obligations that tie the hands of future administrations. The Legislature, being representatives of the people, must have a say in the debate on future union contracts.”

Organized labor leaders have said that the contract signed last year would produce $24 billion in concessions between 2017 and 2037.

“At a time when we are on the precipice of a $5 billion deficit [CT News Junkie has reported that the two-year projection is $4.4 billion] and $100 billion in long-term unfunded liabilities, and we entered into a contract [in 2017] with no layoffs for four years,” Stevenson said. “I don’t think that went far enough.”

“We made promises to hard-working state employees that we’re not going to make good on,” she added.

“Somebody needs to have the right conversation,” Stevenson said. “I’m in no way saying that I’m against unions and collective bargaining, but the state employees have to understand that they were sold a bill of goods.”

The state Commission on Fiscal Stability reported that the pensions for the state employees are only 29 percent funded.

She said she believes that a Republican governor would seek to “restructure those agreements. If not, the state of Connecticut is bankrupt.”

The New York Times has reported that Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, took a state pension system that was only 48 percent funded and suspended increases for current retirees and put part of the defined benefit package for current workers into a 401-K plan.

The agreement ended up in court and the state of Rhode Island prevailed.

“We should bring the rank and file into the conversation and show them that the math doesn’t work for them,” Stevenson said. “They’re not going to get what they were promised.”

“If that’s a non-starter then we will have to go down the path of some legal action,” she said.

Stevenson said resolving the unfunded long-term obligations “would be a critical first step” in reviving the economy of the only New England state that hasn’t recaptured all of the jobs it lost in the 2008 national recession.

“It was one of the big reasons why GE left,” she said regarding that company’s decision to move its headquarters from Fairfield to the Route 128 corridor in Massachusetts. “They didn’t see a path to a stable economy here.”

“We absolutely have to address the pension and unfunded liability issue to prove that we’re on a path to stability,” Stevenson explained.

Stevenson won a fourth term as first selectman last year in a landslide in a town that gave Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton 53 percent of the vote in the 2016 presidential election.

American Community Survey has reported that Darien, which is only 13 square miles in size, is the wealthiest municipality in the United States, with a median household income of $208,125.

Stevenson said she is “the only conservative who can win in November” among the trio of candidates for the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor.

She said Markley, who has served in the state Senate for 10 years over two stints and helped organize the large 1991 anti-income tax rally, is an “ultra-conservative” who would “likely to be a drag on the ticket.”

She said Stewart, who, for example, has been resistant to changes in labor negotiations for state employees, “is very liberal.”