Governor Lamont’s expensive accounting gimmick to buy a little more breathing room in the upcoming biennial budget reveals more than just bad fiscal instincts. It demonstrates once again and beyond any doubt that this government is in large part an agent of the state’s government-employee unions, with all of us ...
Let the emblem of the legislative session, and of the last decade of Connecticut’s governance, be this new “mansion tax.” It was slipped into the budget in the last minute. It wasn’t properly vetted. It sends terrible signals to would-be entrants to Connecticut, while warning Connecticut’s current residents to get the heck out. And ...
The current budget includes a provision, which would go into effect almost immediately, that would require credit-card companies to remit the sales-tax portion of the transaction directly to the state. If it could be done, it would involve an enormous up-front cost and huge annual costs in order to provide a negligible benefit to the state. ...
House Speaker Aresimowicz has dismissed toll opponents and sceptics as “emotional” in their attachment to “perceived details.” But details from a new working draft of the tolls bill that may dominate the final struggle over this issue for 2019 demonstrate that toll opponents have the details right, while Aresimowicz’s and the governor’s camouflage of promises seeks desperately to hide ...
The Governor and legislative leaders have promised us a paid FMLA plan that will cost only one-half-of-one-percent of each worker’s payroll. They have also promised that the benefit will cover up to $900 or $1000 per week in lost wages for 12 – and sometimes more – weeks every year. As we demonstrated earlier ...
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 ...