Sen. Joe Markley, R-Southington, speaking to reporters in the Capitol Press Room on Thursday afternoon, said he was disappointed that the high court did not rule on the merits of his complaint that the state was borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars in a process called securitizing: borrowing against anticipated long-term tax revenue generated by consumer electric taxes.
“I was glad that we brought the suit, in that it brought attention to the issue, which I think most of the people of Connecticut weren’t aware of otherwise,” Markley said. “I think we’ve put the Legislature on notice that when they do things that are legally suspect that they can be held responsible. The last thing I’d say is when we started this case, the state was going to borrow I think it was $800 million and it’s now down to something, I think, under $200 million. So in that sense I feel like we have saved the state 10 years of borrowing some hundreds of millions of dollars, which they otherwise would have obligated ourselves to. So I don’t feel bad about it that way. We never ever did get to the underlying issues in the suit. It was originally dismissed by the Superior Court on a question of exhaustion of administrative remedies. That dismissal was dismissed and it was redismissed on the grounds of sovereign immunity. They never actually confronted the underlying questions of the equity of the tax and the appropriateness of the agency collecting it.”