By Matt Clyburn
Ned Lamont delivered his opinion about the condition of the gubernatorial race in blunt fashion, emphasizing the fierce intensity of both candidates leading up to Election Day in a discussion with NPR’s John Dankosky. The campaign for Connecticut’s next governor has received attention as of late for the incessant negative campaigning and the use of attack ads on television, radio, and internet.
The panel on the “Agenda for the Next Governor” took place in the Vance Academic Center Monday afternoon in front of a standing-room-only crowd of students and local citizens. Lamont was joined by former Republican gubernatorial candidate Oz Griebel to discuss serious issues facing the state’s next chief executive.
Lamont began the panel by saying, “This state’s been in a world of hurt for a very long time…we need a change of direction.” He went on to say that a large part of Connecticut’s problems revolve around the uncertainty facing families and businesses, noting that “we just don’t know what this state’s gonna look like in five years.”
Budgetary and financial concerns were laced into the political discussion, as both Lamont and Griebel agreed that the current economic circumstances in Connecticut are bleak. “This problem doesn’t belong to the unions, it doesn’t belong to the government, it doesn’t belong to the legislature, it belongs to all of us,” Griebel said. “State employees as individuals effectively are not the issue, it’s the benefit structure that’s the issue that we can’t afford.”
The next governor must grapple with these issues in addition to producing a balanced budget 90 days after taking office, the long terms of which will not kick in for another two-to-three years. “You start on the spending side of the equation, and we have not earned the right to raise anybody’s taxes,” Lamont said.
Griebel went on to emphasize Lamont’s implication of a multi-tiered reform, noting that “if [state government] were to raise taxes to solve our current crisis, we would all owe nearly $50,000.” “Any tax increases – income tax increases, sales tax increases, tolls – have to be tied to changing the structure of government.”
Lamont said that “there is room for significant savings…our state pension plan right now is bankrupt, and we’re even more bankrupt when it comes to healthcare.” He then suggested that the next governor should “sit down in good faith, negotiate like heck…and then, in better conscience, we can reduce those contributions we’ve made to the pension funds.
Both former candidates agreed that the pension system has major potential for savings to taxpayers and state government, in addition to a reform of the entitlement society that Griebel believes “we cannot afford.”
