Politics & Government
Voters tell Harding ‘affordability’ is their chief concern
He says after cutting income tax rates for the middle and lower income, more 'needs to be done'
By Scott Benjamin
BROOKFIELD – On a sunny, warm Columbus Day with some people home for the afternoon, fall foliage on the trees, pumpkins and Halloween decorations on the lawns and an election just three weeks away, it is an ideal time to interact with persuadable voters.
On this route some voters are very persuadable. Actually, it appears to be a family reunion.
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Susan Crockett asks about Stephen Harding’s son and daughter – one in elementary school and the other a preschooler.
To top that, Patricia Beck has a grandson who is in the same first grade class at the Candlewood Lake Elementary School as Harding’s son, Carter. She has Harding’s father, Stephen Harding Sr., take a photograph of them together as the Republican canvasses the Oak Crest Drive and Valley View Road neighborhoods in his bid for a second term in the state Senate.
Find out what's happening in Brookfieldfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Brookfield, where Harding has lived for 34 of his 37 years, and neighboring New Milford are the two largest population bases in the 30th state Senate District, which stretches through 18 municipalities going north to Salisbury near the Massachusetts border.
Harding easily prevailed in each of them two years ago when he annexed 53.8 percent of ballots in the district against Democrat Eva Bermudez Zimmerman of New Milford.
In the November 5 election he faces Democrat Justin Potter, a small business owner and the president of Kent Affordable Housing.
Voters have not elected a Democrat since Litchfield attorney Joseph Ruggiero in 1978, who served for one term. However, the less-populated Northwest Corner of Litchfield County, for example, has become more Democratic in recent years.
Harding has been undefeated since he was elected to the Brookfield Board of Education 11 years ago. After that, he captured four races for the state House seat in the 107th District.
Standing at his front door, Kurt Guth tells Harding, “You’ve got my vote. You stand for the right things.”
Since being elected to the upper chamber, Harding has added to his portfolio. He ascended to become caucus leader last February, shortly after the regular session began, and was a delegate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
He said the most frequently discussed topic with voters is “affordability.”
The state reduced the income tax rates for the middle income and the lower income last year. It was the biggest income tax reduction since 1995, Republican former Gov. John Rowland’s first year in office.
What has the reaction been?
“It is generally positive,” said Harding in an interview with Patch.com. “It has helped a little bit. But there is more that needs to be done.”
As he has for months, Harding said the state has about “$4 billion” in its budget reserve, which represents “over-taxation.”
Democratic former President Barack Obama spoke in New Britain in 2014 to praise Connecticut for agreeing to raise its minimum wage to $10.10 an hour in 2017. It is now $15.69 and will advance to $16.35 in January.
“I don’t think it has necessarily been a positive impact,” said Harding. “I understand everyone deserves a living wage. But the question is whether or not that number should go up without any legislative oversight.”
Gov. Ned Lamont (D-Greenwich) signed legislation in 2019 “that connects the state’s minimum wage to economic indicators, specifically the percentage change in the federal employment cost index,” according to a news release from his office.
Harding commented, “That was changed when I was in the House, and that is one of the reasons I voted against the increase at the time, because it would go up without any legislative approval.”
“We have to be cognizant that the businesses impacted most by that minimum wage are the small businesses that are having their bottom line cut more and more each day by the unaffordability of the policies in Hartford,” he exclaimed. “Now they are having to face another wage increase when they can least afford it.”
Potter said he generally supports the increase in the minimum wage and the indexing of those increases.
However, in a phone interview with Patch.com he said some small business owners have told him that if the minimum wage keeps increasing steadily they may not hire dependents – mostly the high school and college-aged with little previous work experience – to minimum wage jobs.
Potter said he would like for the state to explore a slightly lower minimum wage for the younger workers who are dependent on someone else to provide essentials.
“I have two children, and I wouldn’t want them not to be able to get a first-job in a supermarket because the owner thought that the minimum wage was too high for someone with less work experience,” he explained.
On another topic, Greenwich financial investor-columnist Red Jahncke has stated that many state employees have received salary and step increases over the last six years that have amounted to 33 percent. He stated nationally the average in the private sector over that span is 23.5 percent.
Jahncke has written in CT Examiner that there should be an immediate freeze on the state employee salaries.
Harding remarked, “I think it is a worthwhile discussion, absolutely.”
He said that legislators should look at the potential long-term impact on pension costs from the higher salaries.
The state employee pensions were 29 percent funded in 2018, according to the report in March, 2018 from the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness. The state Comptroller’s Office reported last year that the pension were 52 percent funded.
Harding and state officials have said the improvement is mainly due to the fiscal guardrails that were approved in 2017, which have ensured that more money is devoted to paying down the pension debt.
Brookfield Democratic First Selectman Steve Dunn has said that the actuaries consider 80 percent and above to be good to excellent.
Harding said the next contract negotiations with the state employee collective bargaining units could yield considerable savings. He said those talks are scheduled to start and be completed in 2025.
“I think we need to explore reducing the debt cost,” he explained. “We’ve grown our debt with the increase in employer salaries etc. We’re paying down that debt, but at the same time we are growing that debt.”
Harding and all other Republican members of the General Assembly have petitioned for a special session to address the recent surge in electricity costs.
Hartford Courant columnist Kevin Rennie wrote in August, “The state entered into a decade-long deal to require Eversource and United Illuminating, the state’s largest utilities, to purchase significant amounts of power from the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford. The electricity the companies purchase from Millstone and then distribute to customers is often at a price far higher than what they would pay on the open energy market. We, the ratepayers, make up the difference.”
“That difference between the locked in rate and the market rate accounts for more than 3/4 of the recent hike in costs,” he stated.
Harding, who voted against the agreement, said that he agrees with Rennie that “a lot of” of the increased charges relate to the 2017 agreement, which runs until 2029.
However, he added, “I think there are many aspects that are responsible for where we are today,”
As he has for months, Harding said that the state needs to impose “caps” on its energy agreements and it also has “hundreds of millions of dollars” in unused American Rescue Plan funds from the pandemic that could provide relief to electricity consumers.
Ken Dixon of CT Hearst wrote in August that state House Speaker Matt Ritter (D-Hartford), has said that it could make sense to bring lawmakers together in special session to consider spreading out the $200 million in public-benefits charges over 22 months instead of the current 10 months.
Dixon stated that Ritter commented, "We could do it after the elections, yes. But it's going against the fiscal guardrails." The speaker indicated it would be better to address the issue during the regular session that starts in January.
On another topic, driver safety has recently become a higher concern in Connecticut.
For example, in the Patch.com legislative questionnaire profiles, candidates are asked, “”There have been an alarming number of deaths on Connecticut’s roadways. Is there anything from a legislative standpoint that can be done to address that?
Former state Rep. David Scribner (R-107) of Brookfield, who immediately preceded Harding in that seat, was the prime proponent of graduated licensing for 16- and 17-year-old drivers.
The News-Times of Danbury has reported that under graduated licensing, which was signed into law in 2005 by Republican former Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Brookfield, 16- and 17-year-old drivers were required to have at least 20 hours of on-the-road instruction from either a parent or a professional driving instructor, or a combination of both. The previous requirement had been a minimum of eight hours.
Commented Harding, “I think it [graduated licensing] has worked pretty well.”
Harding added that he has spoken with New Milford Republican Mayor Pete Bass about “providing a mechanism to offset some of the costs as it relates to [professional] drivers’ education” programs.
“I think there is a great value to that that,” he explained. “I think younger drivers have a greater sense of responsibility and confidence when they do that.”
Harding said he along with Bass and other state and municipal officials in New Milford got the state Department of Transportation to do a traffic study along Route 7 in New Milford where there have been many serious accidents over the last two years. He said he hopes that the study will lead to the implementation of more traffic lights to make it safer along the roadway, which was widened about 20 years ago.
Republican former President Donald Trump is at the top of the GOP ballot for a third time.
Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford wrote a book on Trump and has stated that he is one of the few presidents who did what he said he was going to do.
Does Harding agree?
“I think it is hard to evaluate,” Harding said. “I would have to see what his platform was and see everything that was implemented.”
He added that all elected officials should “follow through” on their platform. He said that is the standard that he has set for himself.
A poll conducted last month for CT Mirror showed Trump trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, by 16 points in Connecticut.
On a separate subject, in the 1970s, under Republican leader Lew Rome of Bloomfield, all GOP state Senate caucus meetings were open to not only reporters, but the general public.
That apparently was a rare occurrence for any legislative caucus in any era.
Harding said some meetings of the current Republican state Senate caucus “are open. We believe in transparency.”
However, he said that meetings are usually not open when there is discussion that “relates to policy.”
“I believe senators on both side of the aisle may have things they want to share with their colleagues in confidence. We have to respect that as well.”
What is the distribution of Yankee, Red Sox and Met fans in the 30th District.
“In my house it is all Yankees,” declared Harding.
What about across the 18 municipalities?
“If I had to guess: Probably about 40 percent Yankee, 35 percent Red Sox and the rest would be Mets,” said Harding.
He said there is a higher percentage of Yankee fans in Brookfield, New Fairfield, Sherman and New Milford- the southern portion. In the northeast part of the district, such as Litchfield, it is a higher percentage of Red Sox fans.
If the Mets win the World Series will Harding be at the victory parade holding a megaphone?
He said he holds “no animosity” toward the Mets and would like to see a Subway Series with the Yankees taking the ride down the Canyon of Heroes.
Resources:
Interview with Stephen Harding, Patch.com, on Monday, October 14, 2024.
Phone interview with Justin Potter, Patch.com, on Wednesday, October 16, 2024.
https://www.amazon.com/Case-Trump-Victor-Davis-Hanson/dp/1541673549
Lew Rome interview with WXCI radio on Tuesday, January 10, 1978.
https://www.the-red-line.com/2...
https://www.ctinsider.com/politics/article/ct-special-session-lower-electric-rates-19664182.php
https://patch.com/connecticut/brookfield/ct-patch-candidate-profile-aaron-zimmer-state-rep
