The Connecticut Turnpike (Route 95) in Stamford. Soon to again be a toll road?
When it goes to the polls in the state election of November 2018, Connecticutwill be asked to vote on a state constitutional amendment supposedly to ensurethat revenue from taxes levied in the name of transportation is spent only fortransportation purposes.
But the amendment is as much a fraud as the "spending cap" amendment adopted in1992 following enactment of the state income tax. As a practical matter, peoplevoting for the transportation "lockbox" amendment next year will be voting onlyto put tolls back on state highways.
The "spending cap" amendment was a fraud because to become effective it requiredthe General Assembly and governor to enact certain statutory definitions, whichthey never did. So the amendment never has had any effect.
The transportation "lockbox" amendment is a fraud because it would apply totransportation-related tax revenue only once the revenue was actually depositedin the state transportation fund. But ordinary legislation could divert suchrevenue to the general fund before it was deposited inthe transportation fund. Ordinary legislation also could define any expenses as transportation expenses.
The "lockbox" amendment was proposed and approved by the legislature becauseGov. Dannel Malloy and certain legislators did not want to support reimposing tollswhile the public seemed fairly aware of state government's long history ofdiverting supposedly dedicated funds. The governor and these legislators saidthey could support tolls only if their revenue was guaranteed to be spent fortransportation purposes.
The "lockbox" is to pose as that guarantee long enoughto get tolls enacted, and then the lock can be picked whenever it becomesconvenient for whoever is in charge of state government. Some Democratic legislators, such as House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, of Berlin, andRep. Tony Guerrera, of Rocky Hill, House chairman of the TransportationCommittee, say tolls are "inevitable" because fuel tax revenue is declining asinfrastructure needs increase.
But every increase in state government revenue, whether from tolls or taxes, makes inevitable only that state employees will keep getting paid to stay homeon Columbus Day, that University of Connecticut President Susan Herbst will keepgetting paid nearly a million dollars a year, and that Hartford city governmentwill keep getting bailed out no matter how corrupt and inept it becomes. For theDemocrats who control state government will let every road be devoured bypotholes and every bridge collapse from rust before they start managingstate government in the public interest.
Hunting illegals at courthouses
Connecticut Chief Justice Chase Rogers hasurged the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to avoid makingapprehensions of immigration-law violators at the state's courthouses, just asICE strives to avoid making apprehensions at other "sensitive" places, such aschurches. Such apprehensions, the chief justice says, "may cause litigants, witnesses and interested parties to view our courthouses as places to avoidrather than as institutions of fair and impartial justice."
But courthouses are where people go when they are in trouble with the law, andif immigration agents are to give deportation priority to criminal illegalimmigrants rather than otherwise unoffending ones, courthouses may be the bestplace to look for them.
Further, of course, immigration law enforcement is part of justice too and isappropriate wherever the law is being violated. Besides, courthouses already are "places to avoid" quite apart from anyimmigration-law enforcement there. Nobody, not even judges, goes to a courthouseto have a good time.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
