The administration and legislative supporters of tolls have marketed their proposal with claims that a statewide tolling plan, including significant discounts for in-state drivers, would result in the state collecting high levels of revenue from out-of-state drivers. This, they have said, justifies the extremely high construction and maintenance costs of tolling, ...
Tolls can be user fees, depending on how they are conceived and implemented. As proposed in Connecticut, however, they will not be user fees, but rather a massive wealth transfer: in short, another giant tax increase. Politicians trying to hide a huge tax increase under another – any other – label is depressing, but not surprising. What is ...
Requiring municipalities to take more responsibility for their teachers’ pension costs makes some sense – if those towns have the power to lower those pensions or the teachers’ other compensation. To do so any other way is old-style taxation without representation, of the sort for which we gave King George the boot. ...
We would all like to be able to take up to 12 weeks of paid time off every year if something bad happens to us, or to a family member, or if we are blessed with a child, or face any number of other stressful circumstances. In fact, that’s exactly the ...
How can the state reduce education spending (save money on education) while continuing to support high – and improving – educational achievement? The answer likely includes some specific instances of gradual school consolidation and school-service centralization. A long train of experiences in other states, studied again and again by a ...
The counter-intuitive fact is that Connecticut’s estate tax hurts everyone – and mostly hurts those who depend on state payments, not those who pay the most in taxes. We need to abandon it. Proponents of estate taxes make a number of arguments in its defense. The primary claim made for ...