“That is Mr. Sherman, of Connecticut, a man who never said a foolish thing in his life,” Thomas Jefferson was reported to have said in describing Roger Sherman, one of just two founding fathers who signed the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence.
As roundabout 200 people in Hartford ready to muck around with the Connecticut Constitution on behalf of the other 3.4 million of the rest of us, all we can say is this:
Sorry Mr. Sherman, it”™s silly season again, as the Connecticut General Assembly reassembles Feb. 8 and the state”™s April presidential primary inches closer.
Whereas Gov. Dannel P. Malloy”™s inaugural year was squarely about issues impacting business ”“ taxes and incentives ”“ the current term is likely to touch charged debates far from the boardroom ”“ early education and the death penalty.
Not that business should be lost on legislators as they go about their business.
In its annual ranking of the best states for business released in late January, Connecticut ranked 40th, zooming up seven rungs from the year before even as New York and New Jersey remained mired at the bottom of the barrel.
If up is good, it comes with a word or two of caution ”“ the Tax Foundation said Connecticut”™s extension of a surcharge on corporate taxes does not show up on this year”™s survey. And the state still falls short of its ranking only in 2010, when it held the 38th slot. And if well ahead of New York and New Jersey, it remains well behind Massachusetts, which soared eight rungs to 24th on the survey.
If the Bay State”™s “taxachusetts” tagline is long gone, “the land of steady habits” sobriquet attached to Connecticut continues to this day. The slogan was never intended to imply a sleepy bedroom community, argues Kip Bergstrom, Malloy”™s jack-of-all-economic trades who spoke to a gathering last week of the Fairfield County Public Relations Association in Stamford. Rather it was intended to convey a steadiness under fire.
“We are still that way,” Bergstrom says. “We are cool. We”™re calm. We actually think.”
If cool and occasionally strident, few governors have corralled the public engine of thought as has Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who had at least a few critics wringing their hands as he jetted off to Switzerland last month for the World Economic Forum in Davos (at what point did maneuvering the word “Connecticut” into face-to-face conversations with the most powerful people on the planet become a waste of money?).
You probably need to conjure former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker to find a governor that successfully carved into a tougher block of policymaking rock than Malloy, when Weicker instituted Connecticut”™s first income tax coming out of the recession of the early 1990s.
If both Weicker and Malloy are marked by a bulldog mentality ”“ Weicker was a director of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. after all ”“ they were cut from a different political cloth. Malloy made his mark as mayor of Stamford, whereas Weicker was mostly schooled in the halls of Congress and before that the Connecticut General Assembly. Like several other governors, Weicker had a stint in city government ”“ in his case in Greenwich ”“ but his political connections were groomed in the statehouse.
“We have had generations of legislators serving as governor,” says Chris Bruhl, CEO of the Business Council of Fairfield County, “as opposed to the feeling that, ”˜I can”™t go home until I get something done”™ ”¦ which mayors have.”
Not a few people in Fairfield County believe that Malloy sees Hartford as only the first checkmark on an itinerary mapped out for Washington, D.C. ”“ with Davos perhaps a career-boosting stopover along the way.
Get enough done in Hartford and Malloy will have earned that ticket. But first things first, there are 200 people and by extension 3.4 million more bringing their own agendas to the fore in the coming weeks.
“Politics is great ”“ it”™s people, it”™s competition,” says Bruhl”™s Business Council colleague Joe McGee, who has had the ear of both Malloy and Weicker in his career. “It”™s intellectually challenging because you got to come up with a plan ”¦ It”™s hard work, people have strong opinions. But in this country we don”™t ”¦ jail the losers. It”™s a big conversation. I may not agree with a lot of it, but at the same time it forces people to (sit) back and think, ”˜What do I believe in?”™”
