State of the State addresses are often filled with high hopes and great one-liners, and very few specifics.
So what can we gather from Gov. Ned Lamont's remarks this week as he enters his second term?
NBC Connecticut's Mike Hydeck spoke with Connecticut Mirror co-founder and veteran state capitol reporter Mark Pazniokas about it.
Mark Pazniokas: I'm trying not to laugh at that intro because it does raise the anxiety in me that you now expect me to explain what it was the governor did not share. And that's really the heart of what we're waiting for. There were some broad strokes, a meaningful middle-class tax cut. What does that mean? We don't know yet. An end to subsidies. He wants an end to lifelines and he wants to provide ladders, ladders to opportunity. What does that mean? I can't tell you, Mike.
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Mike Hydeck: Well I won't make you go deep into something that you can't tell me. So let's go to the next question. Let's go with a little bit of history here in Connecticut. William O'Neill also governed from a place of fiscal strength. He had a surplus when he was in office. That was during the Reagan years. Can Governor Lamont learn anything by looking back at Mr. O'Neill's time in office?
Mark Pazniokas: Well, you can learn a couple of things. One is that story ended very badly for William A O'Neill because, by the time he left, the state was pretty much broke. And that's how Lowell Weicker ended up coming in and pushing through an income tax because the state tax system was at a point of collapse in January 1991 when Lowell Weicker took office. O'Neill governed in both situations where money was plentiful, and then money wasn't. So perhaps that is the lesson and that is the one thing we know for certain about Ned Lamont, he ran on fiscal responsibility. His campaign learned that that message tested very well, that Connecticut's long history of struggling with debt, with an unfunded pension liability, to see the state actually pay down portions of that unfunded pension liability, which puts Connecticut in a category pretty much all by itself, and it's not a place you want to be. So he will continue to do that. But to your point, that money is available right now, there may be a recession over the horizon. But right now, the state of Connecticut is really awash with cash, and there's going to be a push within his own party to spend some of that money to address certain needs that Democrats and Republicans as well, have certainly identified. And one of the challenges I think the legislature will have is, the Democrats had great electoral victories in November in Connecticut, in large measure, because the Democratic base is much more diverse economically and geographically than it's been. It's gone beyond the Democratic cities and suburbs to, you know, well into Fairfield County. That's all good when it comes to winning races. The challenge now is though, you have a very diverse base, and people will want presumably different things. People down in Fairfield County are not going to be jumping up and down and saying, 'let's make the tax code more progressive.' Let's not hit people at the higher end harder. So we're gonna, I think we're gonna see that kind of struggle in this session, and you can see some of it already in some of the early bills that have been filed.
Mike Hydeck: We have to leave it there, Mark. It's gonna be a big tug-of-war for sure.
