Weary legislators depart, leaving behind flawed system

Connecticut's fiscal crisis is taking its toll on our elected leaders, with nearly two dozen state legislators publicly announcing their retirement this year.

The most surprising and high-profile departure will be House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, who just a year ago proclaimed his intentions to remain in his leadership post for a third term.

That was before this year's legislative session, in which a nearly $1 billion deficit put him at odds with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and forced Sharkey to oversee hundreds of millions of dollars in state budget cuts — tough medicine, particularly for a Democrat.

What should we conclude from these Golden-Dome departures?

We don't want to over-generalize — the CT Mirror recently talked to a cadre of departing lawmakers who gave personal and professional reasons for fleeing — but it's a good indication that our state's fiscal crisis is nowhere near over and lawmakers are simply tired of dealing with the mess (projected budget forecasts already confirmed we are facing more billion-dollar deficits in fiscals 2018 and 2019).

If legislators passed a budget this year that truly reformed government and paved a road to fiscal stability, there would certainly be less incentive to leave and most likely fewer departures from the General Assembly. That's particularly the case for Sharkey, who previously lobbied his House Democratic colleagues to keep him on as speaker for a third two-year term, starting next year.

Sharkey certainly had a tough go as speaker, faced with continual steep budget deficits that required difficult decision after difficult decision. He helped oversee a big tax increase as well as major spending reductions, but he also ran a House that failed to produce budgets in a timely manner, leading to the passage of last-minute and sometimes ill-advised spending plans.

Sharkey's biggest faux pas came last year, when he publicly admitted he and his fellow legislators made a mistake passing certain unvetted business tax increases in the waning moments of the 2015 legislative session. That, of course, led some of Connecticut's largest corporate citizens — General Electric, Aetna, Travelers — to rebuke the state legislature and threaten to leave if changes weren't made. Policymakers responded by rolling back tax hikes on data processing and delaying the unitary reporting requirement on corporations.

To be fair, being a state legislator in Connecticut is a thankless job. It's a part-time position that is increasingly demanding full-time attention all for a whopping $28,000 salary, plus benefits (lawmakers in leadership positions do make slightly more). Many lawmakers must balance a career while trying to oversee an increasingly complex state government that has a $20 billion operating budget, and tens of billions more on its balance sheet.

Some retiring lawmakers said they could no longer balance their jobs, personal life and legislative duties, according to the CT Mirror.

With such a system in place, is there any wonder why Connecticut faces the fiscal crisis it does? Would a company overseen by 187 part-time vice presidents or decision makers be an efficiently run organization?

Yes, the Great Recession negatively shifted our state's economic trajectory, but our legislature has largely responded with patchwork solutions that temporarily mask problems, rather than solve them.

This is the key reason why the state needs to seriously consider adopting a professional, full-time legislature with fewer members better equipped to handle the complex issues of a 21st-century global economy and society.

That may be the only way to attract a higher-caliber legislative body.

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