Powell: If teachers feel underpaid, so what? Many other people do too

By CHRIS POWELL

Has any candidate in Connecticut ever repudiated his own campaign television commercial as quickly as Governor Lamont, a Democrat seeking election to a third term, did the other day?

The governor's commercial calling the state's schools the best in the country included a pledge to arrange pay raises for teachers. Some people wondered if that meant the governor would support enacting a statewide minimum starting salary for teachers of $60,000. But questioned by Connecticut's Hearst newspapers, the governor said he was not advocating that and offered no explanation of what, if anything, his assertion in the commercial meant.

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In any case the commercial provided an opportunity for the president of the state's largest teachers union, the Connecticut Education Association, to make another pitch for raises. The union's president, Kate Dias, noted that while the estimated average salary for teachers in the state is, at $91,000, the sixth highest among the states, the states with the highest teacher salaries also have the highest cost of living.

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Even for a single person in Connecticut, Dias said, that $91,000 is barely a living wage, especially since the cost of housing in the state is so high. For a teacher trying to support a family, she said, that salary is "woefully short."

But this isn't much of an argument. For teachers are not the only Connecticut residents under financial strain. Indeed, most people are feeling pinched lately amid inflation, and the latest report from the state's United Way organization said that about 40% of Connecticut residents are financially unstable and unable to afford essentials.

These people just don't have a politically influential union to represent them. They have to rely on their state legislators, who listen more carefully to special interests like teacher unions.

Besides, teachers receive valuable compensation that doesn't get counted in their salaries: medical insurance and pension benefits that are much better than what private-sector workers have, as well as job security under the teacher tenure law.

Some teachers still may deserve a raise. But most teachers, covered by union contracts, will get raises even when many private-sector workers won't, and if teachers deserve raises larger than what their union contracts get them, it will be mainly because their students increasingly are unparented and poorly behaved.

So rather than be given special treatment, teachers should be welcomed to the growing club of financially strained Connecticut residents and should pursue policy solutions that benefit people generally -- more housing construction, which will require curtailing municipal zoning, and ending inflation, which will require reducing government spending.

Since solutions are probably impossible politically amid state government's subservience to special interests, change is unlikely.

Lamont's campaign commercials tout the many goodies the Democratic state administration has bestowed on Connecticut, while the commercials of his Republican challenger, Greenwich state Sen. Ryan Fazio, promise big cuts in taxes. So it's fair to conclude that, as usual, the Democrats will spend more, the Republicans less.

But Fazio isn't leveling with people much more than the governor is.

Big cuts in taxes eventually will require big cuts in spending, and Fazio isn't strong on specifics there. In an interview with the Connecticut Examiner the other day he talked about "unfunded state mandates" on municipalities and cited the requirement for them to put legal notices in newspapers -- a small expense -- but didn't mention the elephants in the budget room, binding arbitration of municipal employee union contracts and the minimum budget requirement for school systems. Those laws actually prohibit public control over most municipal spending even as they can't be discussed because it would upset the biggest local special interests, municipal government employee unions.

Polls suggest that Fazio is yet to catch on with voters, and President Trump's unpopularity may bring down all Republicans in Connecticut next month. So when you're likely to lose anyway, you might as well try candor and telling the truth. Shocking people like that will get lots of attention and make it easier for the next guy who might try candor and the truth.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net) His other columns are here.