Friday, June 09, 2006

What's Wrong With The Race For Governor?

Campaigns tend to resemble the battlefields of ideas that only the campaigners seem concerned about. Oh sure, they run focus groups and polls, listen to ardent supporters and activists and distill the cacophony to positive spinology with a side dish of attack the other guy. But in the end, the bullet point driven spiel sounds hollow to most voters because it lacks authenticity.

Take Rell’s elimination of the car tax proposal. On the surface a good idea. Anyone can see that there is something inequitable when the owner of Honda Civic in Bridgeport pays 3x the car property tax than the owner of the Honda Civic in Greenwich. The opposition to the idea formed its battlefield along the “who’s going to pay for it” line and the idea, the part about the inequity and more problematic the inefficiency of the tax got lost in the battlefield.

The interesting thing was that prior to the proposal, there was no groundswell of people clamoring for it’s repeal. Plenty of people don’t like it, or think its to high, but it wasn’t even near the top of the list of what concerns most residents.

Likewise, healthcare. The Malloy and DeStefano campaigns released plans to address and issue that really doesn’t affect most residents. Like the car tax, people don’t like that their health care costs too much, or that they have to wait for doctor appointments, or change primary care physicians with each insurance plan or employment change. But it’s not near the top of the list of what concerns most residents.

So why aren’t the campaigns talking about what really concerns residents most? Part of the answer, is that they don’t really know. To know what the majority of the state’s residents are concerned about means that you have to listen to concerns expressed by people and companies that don’t vote. Part of the answer is also that they do know, but since there are no clear cut answers to these problems they simply ignore them. Somehow, I don’t think the guys who sat around the oak table plotting the American Revolution thought that way.

So what is the biggest problem facing Connecticut? Simple. Gridlock. Our state, despite its many virtues, is completely and totally hampered by the difficulty in moving people, goods and services efficiently and cost effectively. Our roads and highways are commuter parking lots, our parking lots are overflowing, our train infrastructure has little intrastate capabilities, and we have failed to compete economically with our neighboring states. There are no cheap internet services. There is no investment in optimizing government through regionalization and technology adoption. There is no education strategy for adapting our workforce to new needs.

You can’t expect job growth without addressing the brain drain of this state. When young people can’t afford to live and work in the same town, they move to where they can. When companies can’t attract top shelf talent, they move to where they can. Only a few years ago it was difficult to manage a workforce that was decentralized. Today its not. Tomorrow it will be even easier. Without location based amenities to compete with against other states, Connecticut will creak to a standstill, becoming a larger land-based Nantucket where home renovations and tourism fuel a seasonal economy with imported workers.

With the capital markets in New York City and the intellectual markets in Boston, Connecticut is in the perfect position to grow the next generation of industry leaders. Without the political will to address the ability of people, goods and services to flow freely within the state as well as to New York City and Boston, it won’t happen.

Will any of the candidates for Governor speak to the future of Connecticut in the information age? Somehow I doubt it.

5 comments:

GMR said...

Here's something that I have long pondered, but am unsure of what a good solution is.

Right now, lower Fairfield county -- Greenwich, Stamford, etc. -- is filled with people who commute on the trains every day into NYC.

It is my understanding that these people pay income tax to New York state, and thus don't pay much of any income tax in Connecticut, as New York rates are higher than Connecticut rates.

Yet Connecticut pays large subsidies for Metro North so that these people can work in out of state jobs and not pay any income tax into the State of Connecticut.

Now, I realize many people take the train from NY to CT or from one CT town to another, but I'm sure that overall, CT supplies more commuters to NY than NY does to CT.

Is there anything CT can do about this? Probably not, but it just doesn't seem right

I think that traffic is a huge issue in this state. I just don't think that we can really widen I-95, from an economic and engineering point of view. Well, we could engineer it, but it'd be expensive. Large swaths are elevated, and it goes through expensive territory.

You could widen the Merritt, but would have to remove the historical bridges. But the state owns the land around the highway aleady.

I-84 is being widened in parts between Waterbury and Hartford now.

I don't know much about I-91 or I-395.

CC said...

BR: Could not agree more! To be sure, the candidates do differ significantly on the "hot button" issues, namely, gay marriage and the death penalty.

I would take issue with the argument made in the main post that gridlock is the number one problem the state is facing. IMHO, the number one issue -- not surprising coming as it does from a Republican -- relates to enormously high property taxes. Did anyone see the most recent economic prospects for New England? New Hampshire and Connecticut fared the best. What do the two states have in common? Well, New Hampshire does not have an income tax, and CT did not have an income tax until 1991. (Thanks Lowell Weicker.) Taxes matter as evidenced by the fact that 1,000 people move to Florida (no income tax) every day.

Genghis Conn said...

I live in CT but commute to Springfield, MA, every day. Both my wife and I work in MA. We get a credit for our CT income taxes--meaning we don't pay a cent to the state.

Instead, we're paying twice as much as we would have to Connecticut to Massachusetts. Which sucks.

Authentic Connecticut Republican said...

turfgrrl said... "
JDS has more skeletons in his closet than Rowland and the last thing we need is a perpetual corruption machine.



WOW!

Having owned a business in New Haven I can assure you that you're 100% correct.


-ACR

GMR said...

One thing I do not understand about Metro North, and many other public transportation systems as well, is parking.

Public transportation systems cost a huge bundle to build. The ticket sales never nearly cover the costs, but the government builds these systems to take cars off the road, help the environment, etc.

Parking garages are relatively cheap, yet just about every metro north station on the New Haven line has no available parking.

Billions have been spent to build the railroad, so why can't we spend a few hundred thousand and build a few parking garages?

In Darien a few years ago, the local residents stopped the expansion of a parking lot because having more people take the train would increase traffic. Of course, under this logic, having more people take the train increases traffic, but of course if fewer people take the train, that will also increase traffic.