Ken Dixon's Blog-O-Rama

Asked to comment a couple weeks ago on the issue of the state’s massive unfunded pension and health-care liabilitite, Gov. M. Jodi Rell declined. Today, however, she just released “more than a dozen bold, innovative ideas for addressing the state’s $34 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities,” which the next governor will choose to ignore or not when they take office in early January, around the time she’s heading back to Brookfield in her own car for a change.

 The suggests include establishing a so-called defined contribution plan for new state workers and capping pensions at $100,000 per year.

            “Governments all over the country and at every level – federal, state and local – are struggling with this issue,” Rell said in a statement. “Nationwide, it is a $1 trillion problem. The problem in Connecticut has accumulated over decades, to the point where we have about $25 billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health benefits and about $9 billion for retiree pensions. She would also establish a “Rule of 80,” so that health benefits for former state employees do not start at the time of their retirement, unless their combined age and years of service total 80 years.”

            Here’s the rest of her news release:

• Establish a rule that in years where there are negative earnings in investments there would be no Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for that year  
• Increase the early retirement to age 60 and increase the penalty for early retirement
• Increase the normal retirement age to 65
• Increase the premium share for retiree health insurance to active rates for the former employee and a higher amount for dependents
• Seek to reduce long-term health cost trends through service delivery changes such as higher co-pays for emergency room and specialist visits
• Move final average salary computation from 3 years to 5 years for pension purposes
• Reduce timeframe for buying back military and other service
• Invest a sizable portion of any savings in the annual Actuarially Required Contribution from these changes towards reducing unfunded liability

Well, they didn’t find him in the Meadowlands when they demolished Giants Stadium, so why not here in Connecticut, where workers today continue rebuilding cracked sidewalks around the Capitol building as part of a half-million-dollar project using federal Clean Water Act funds and a grant from the local Metropolitan District Commission to help separate storm water runoff from the sewer system. Okay, it’s unlikely that the skeleton of the late Teamster boss, missing since July 30, 1975, (as we are reminded by Wikipedia) will turn up here.

Eric Connery, facilities administrator for the Joint Office of Legislative Management, told the Blogster that some of the new sidewalks are a style called “permeable paving,” allowing rain water to percolate. The whole project is part of a nationwide Green Capitols effort. Also under construction will be three so-called rain gardens that will take runofff to irrigate plant beds. The gravel area over the boiler, located next to the parking place for the governor and secretary of the state, will be covered with plantings and more rainwater will be stored in a tank. “It’s an interesting demonstration project,” Connery just said, acknowledging that the permeable paving could result in a different type of snow-removal this winter.

 Michael Cardin, a former member of the House of Representatives from Tolland, where he’s a middle-school teacher, has been arrested by State Police on a warrant alleging “inappropriate behavior” toward young girls.

 A victim’s parent filed a formal complaint after an alleged touching incident was announced by the victim.

 On Wednesday, the day after Cardin turned 40, an arrest warrant was issued and Cardin turned himself in to police today at about 3 p.m. He was released on $5,000 bond, charged with risk of injury to a minor and disorderly conduct.

 Cardin may be best known for having been a chief proponent of the Genius of Connecticut statue, the newly cast bronze based on the model of the original 16-foot-tall piece that adorned the top of the state Capitol from 1878 until the hurricane of 1938. It was subsequently melted down for the World War II effort. He did not seek re-election in 2006.

Back when boxing – and politicians, for that matter – had some sort of legitimacy in the eyes of the general sporting public, there were weighing-in ceremonies in which the size of fists, length of reaches, heights and waists were compared in the “tale of the tape.”

 The Blogster recently interviewed the campaign managers for the two major gubernatorial candidates: Republican Tom Foley and Democrat Dannel Malloy.

 Foley’s manager is Justin Clark, 35, a graduate of Wesleyan University and the UConn Law School.

 An attorney since 2004, Clark clerked for state Supreme Court Associate Justice Peter Zarella and then joined the Hartford firm of Pepe & Hazard.

 Clark lives in West Hartford with his wife and three kids. He has been active in Republican state politics since 2006 and was an early supporter of Foley’s U.S. Senate race, which shifted over to governor when Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced in December she would not seek re-election.

 “The biggest task for a campaign manager is making sure the campaign and all its parts running smoothly,” Clark said. “Policy, communications, the political and field program; everything’s on the right track.”

 Dan Kelly, 31, Malloy’s manager graduated, with a political science degree from the University of Minnesota.

 He worked for the smoke-free coalition in Minnesota, then for U.S. Rep. Jim Davis in Florida, before getting a job with the Wisconsin Democratic Party. He also worked for the Virginia coordinated campaign. More recently Kelly managed the governor’s race for a Pennsylvanian, who dropped out, but who knew Malloy.

 “I talked with Dan in late-December, early January,” said Kelly, who says it seems as if four or five election deadlines have already been surmounted, including the support needed to win the party convention in May and the crucial $250,000 collected in small contributions to qualify for the voluntary public-funding program.

 “It has been in six-week to two-month sprints,” Kelly said. “The  staff here, our volunteers, have been through a couple battles right now,” Kelly said.

• Meigs Point, Middle & East Beach-no lifeguards
• West Beach will have lifeguards

• West Beach-no lifeguards
• East Beach will have lifeguards

• Hammonasset – Madison
• Rocky Neck – Niantic
• Sherwood Island – Westport
• Silver Sands – Milford
• Black Rock – Watertown
• Burr Pond – Torrington
• Indian Well – Shelton
• Mount Tom – Litchfield
• Squantz Pond – New Fairfield
• Wadsworth Falls – Middletown
• Wharton Brook – Wallingford”

Well, not really, but the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, speaking to reporters before the almost-annual Crocodile Club roast at Lake Compounce, did reveal a campaign secret.

Blogster: “Would you suggest that Dick Blumenthal wear a cup today?”

McMahon: “I left my steel-toed shoes at home.”

Independent gubernatorial candidate Tom Marsh, Chester’s first selectman, leans up against his 1992 Jaguar (“I only put about 3,000 miles a year on it”) convertible, which he bought used and talks energy policy with a couple of reporters. Here’s some of the tape:

“What differentiates me from what I’ve seen, particularly when it comes to energy policy is that I think I have a longer-term view than what I’ve heard and, I think, some more realistic and practical applications to energy policy. One of the candidates (Democrat Dan Malloy) has talked about conservation, saving 15 percent on our usage and that’s laudable and I would support that. But it’s not really practical in the short-term sense on how we’re going to change around our dependence or change the cost of energy delivery in Connecticut….

“We’re not focused on how we want to deliver energy so I think the first thing we have to do is get organized and say how do we want to bring the policies that we want to talk about out to the residential and business community of Connecticut? I think once we get organized, then we have to focus on our outcomes and our outcomes shouldn’t be specific to ‘oh we need green technology’ or ‘we need better transportation initiatives.’ It’s got to be all encompassing because energy touches our economic development, it touches our transportation, touches our quality of life and you develop those outcomes and start building your organization based on those outcomes. One of the things that I think is particularly longer term, is a policy that makes Connecticut more self-sufficient on its energy and by that I mean we spend about $4 billion a year on fuel, fossil fuels, in this state and if we could take that $4 billion, which right now almost all of it leaves the state and start keeping more of that money in the state for other uses by doing some conservation to bring our use down; from cogeneration, which does exist in Connecticut. We do have some cogeneration plants. UConn has a very-efficient cogeneration plant. But right here in Hartford back in the ‘50s, they used cogeneration in an energy district, basically a big steam loop to take some of the waste heat and heat the buildings. That’s a process used all over Europe and really not here in Connecticut. What if we were to take the trash-to-steam plant here or the plant down in Bridgeport?…If the state could assist a city to build that steam loop, to build an energy district and then attract business not by throwing a bunch of money at it and creating a false economy to be here, but to say ‘look, this infrastructure exists. You occupy this building or you build a new facility here and you’re going to get free heating and cooling for the next 50 or 60 years…’ If we can wean ourselves away from some of the fossil fuels and the expenses we’re sending out of state and provide economic assistance to make Connecticut a more-effective place to do business, that’s a long-term solution, not a short-term solution like the tax incentives that we often see are….

“Green design is going to be something that’s going to be here for decades. And Connecticut is already is on the leading edge of that but America as a whole is on the trailing edge behind Europe. But if we can foster greater development in the professional abilities in training and staffing the assets we have in Connecticut, we can build upon that as the whole industry grows. We already have a great education infrastructure, we have some expertise here in the state already and we need to let the world know that if you have an interest in that you need to be here in Connecticut because just as New York is a financial center we can say Connecticut is the center for innovative design and engineering technologies on green buildings.”

 Marsh said the town of Chester has just signed on with an electricity provider that will bring down its kilowatt-hour rate by about 15 percent and that there will soon be a link on the town’s website offering taxpayers a chance to join in at the same rate. “In essence the town vetted the company and now we’re saying any homeowner can do it…It should be easily accessible for a Chester resident to click on a link and say ‘I filled this out and now I get 15-percent lower rates.’ So I think we can do that. I’m also chairman of a 17-town consortium. We’re doing the Chester project as a test case. If we can get through three, four months of its working well, we’ll see if we can get even lower rates by spreading it to a 17-town price. As a statewide administration I think we could work more on bringing that down…What really isn’t reported is the add-ons that Connecticut puts on our electric bills are more than what the electric rates are in places like Wyoming and Kentucky. So it’s not the deregulation that’s caused it, it’s a lot of what we’ve done here. And part of it was the promises that were made to the companies that are now building power plants. Ten years ago we had a very serious problem with the availability of power. That problem has decreased quite a bit because there has been a lot of power plant construction. And the construction is here because of the rates we pay. So in essence we provided an incentive for capital investment in the state and now we’ve said thank you for building it, but by the way we’re taking all this away and you’re never going to see a return on your investment. Connecticut can’t have a reputation for doing things like that. I think we are where we are with what we have…As we continue to move forward we can use examples that are here in Connecticut and around the state where there are energy co-ops and again, some of the lowest cost-of-energy states in the country have these co-ops where they’re like quasi-public-owned generation plants. We have one right here in Connecticut: CEEMC out in Norwich and they provide the lowest energy cost in Connecticut for their customers…”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley is wearing his lack of union support like a red badge of courage, with the apparent hopes that his lack of union endorsements will be offset by mainstream, non-union voters to propell him into office. Last week, in an interview, Foley criticized Malloy for joining in a picket line of union workers outside a nursing home on the morning of the August 10 gubernatorial primaries.

 “He clearly cut a deal with unions to get support from unions,” Foley said, acknowledging that he has no support from organized labor. “He’s an old-school Democrat, a career politician and understands unions are important to get elected.” Still, Foley said he has reached out to state unions including the AFL-CIO, which has about 260,000 members in the state, SEBAC and AFSCME.

 “I’m going to need to have an open dialogue to figure out how to best solve these problems,” Foley said. “But I’m not in their pocket and I’ll negotiate very hard on behalf of the best long-term interests of the state of Connecticut.”

 Malloy said he was proud to join Local 1199 nursing-home workers on August 10.“We have had Republican governors of the state of Connecticut for 20 years and the lack of leadership and accountability and transparency is evident to all,” Malloy said. “We are perhaps at our darkest financial moment and I will provide leadership and expect union members to come to the table to resolve these problems.”

 Malloy defended Foley’s charge that he’s too cozy with unions.

 “Let’s begin with the specifics: there were four nursing homes with ongoing strikes where the employer violated specific rules with respect to the treatment of employees and refused to enter into a contact entered by other members of their association,” Malloy recalled. “I walked the picket line with people who worked there for 20 years and were still making only $12 to $14 an hour. I will walk with them any day.”