The value of listening

By Scott Benjamin

As Connecticut’s 89^th Governor, Ned Lamont, his administrative staff and a General Assembly with several new members embark on the new session, it might be worth embracing the value of listening.

It’s a trait that is helpful in many aspects of life.

Consider:

n U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Cheshire) has said that if you’re not going door to door to speak with constituents you’re going to get a “skewed perspective” of the electorate.

n Art Haddad, the former cross country coach at Henry Abbott Tech in Danbury, has said how fortunate he was to get advice when he started coaching from the late Dan Garamella, then the athletic director for the Wolverines, and Tony Gorman, then the basketball coach, both of whom are now in the Connecticut High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

“Always listen to the people with experience,” Haddad said at the time. “I play golf with guys in their 70s. I always listen to what they have to say.”

n University of Connecticut women’s basketball associate head coach Chris Dailey was quoted in a 2012 column by Jeff Jacobs, then with the Hartford Courant, that in recruiting she has found that listening is very important,

Dailey, who at the time was rated by ESPN as the fourth best recruiter in all of college sports, said that is the best way to evaluate the circumstances regarding the prospect is to listen to what the recruit and her family have to say.

n Journalist Marc Gunther, who was the State Capitol Bureau Chief for the Hartford Courant in the early 1980s, stated in his 1994 book, “The House That Roone Built” on Roone Arledge’s tenure as president of ABC News, that the establishment of “America Held Hostage,” the 30-minute show that debuted in November 1979 and four months later became “Nightline,” came from Arledge hearing his doorman and then shortly later during a publicity tour the people in Lake Placid, N.Y. , where the upcoming Winter Olympics would be held, discussing the hostages in Iran.

n Pollsters Anna Greenberg and Jeremy Rosner wrote in 2017 in the Washington Post that focus groups are valuable in conducting polls.

“The best polling has always been accompanied by directly listening to people, face to face, in their own words,” they stated.

n Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, a former candidate for governor, said in a 2011 interview that politicians are too afraid to change their positions. “They won’t say, ‘I took this position in October and since then I spoke with these young people who provided some insight on the issue that I hadn’t considered before. Now it’s January and as a result of that, I’m changing my position because I learned something new about it.’ ” He added, "People should not vote someone who is going to be ideological."

During the last budget development session, held in 2017, there apparently was a lack of compromise among Connecticut state officials. A budget package that was supposed to be approved before the high school graduations, certainly before Independence Day, was finally passed just before Halloween. In the end the General Assembly approved a package without having Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) in the room for the final negotiations.

CT Hearst Political Editor Ken Dixon and CTNewsJunkie columnist Terry Cowgill have written that Malloy has taken some steps to right the ship through funding the state employee pensions fully, getting concessions on the pension program for new state workers and reducing the full-time state work force by 13.1 percent over the last eight years.

CTMirror reported in 2018 that the teachers’ pension fund had reserved to cover 56 percent of its long-term assets after reportedly being inadequately funded from 1939 to 2008.

A decade after the Great Recession, Connecticut faces a $1.7 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year that starts in July.

During a campaign appearance in New Milford in 2009, when he was making his first bid for governor, Lamont lamented that the 2008 financial crisis had largely resulted from some of the big banks being overleveraged as much as 40:1.

Now Connecticut needs to resolve a large fiscal bubble after decades of neglect.

Ray Dalio of Greenwich - the owner of Bridgewater Associates in Westport, the largest hedge fund in the world – wrote in his recent book, “Principles,” that when considering decisions on the national economy the Federal Reserve Board should first consider the growth in debt.

Under the current circumstances, perhaps Connecticut’s state officials should take a similar tact.

The state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness has reported that through years of neglect the pensions for the state employees are only 29 percent funded.

The pensions for the teachers in the public primary, middle and secondary schools, which the state has paid for since 1939, are so under-funded that Malloy sought two years ago to get the municipalities to pay for up to one-third of the costs.

Sources ranging from state Rep. Stephen Harding (R-107) of Brookfield to former state Sen. Jamie McLaughlin, a former Woodbury and Brookfield resident who now lives in Darien and is a financial consultant, to former Webster Bank economist Nick Perna of Ridgefield believe resolving the debt crisis would do the most to boost Connecticut’s economy.

Maybe it would be worth remembering the actions of the late former President George H.W. Bush, who grew up in Greenwich. In 1990 he increased taxes, but on the condition that Congress establish the Pay As You Go budget controls in which new spending would either have to be paid for with additional revenue or via reductions in other line items.

Or maybe it would be worth listening to departing California Gov. Jerry Brown, who, according to the Los Angeles Times, increased income taxes for the wealthy and sales taxes across the board, and after facing a deficit eight years ago California has $28 billion in its budget reserves.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-4) of Greenwich was one of just 38 congressmen to vote in 2012 for a version modeled after the Alan Simpson-Erskine Bowles report from National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010 that was established by former President Barack Obama.

He told Greenwich Patch last July that if Simpson-Bowles, which included reductions in discretionary spending and tax increases, had been approved the federal government would be on its way to a balanced federal budget. That hasn’t happened since the plan submitted in October 2000 by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. There were no balanced federal budgets from the package that former Democratic President Lyndon Johnson presented in October 1968 until the one that Clinton unveiled in October 1997.

Washington Post economics columnist Robert Samuelson has stated that too often politicians are unwilling to endure short-term pain for long-term gain.

Perhaps the value of quality listening and the willingness to embrace bold ideas should be the blueprint for the 2019 session of the General Assembly.