In town to promote a new Obamacare milestone, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Monday swiftly took the fizz out of a separate proposal targeted at improving poor people’s health — a 2 percent tax on high-calorie sugary beverages.
The proposal came from his top New Haven ally, Mayor Toni Harp, a fellow Democrat.
Harp last week included a so-called soda tax in the city’s list of priorities for the new state legislative session.
Malloy stated was asked about it Monday during a press conference at the local Obamacare storefront at 55 Church St. (Click on the video to watch his response.)
“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” the governor said.
He proceeded to argue against ever considering such a tax — even in a year other than 2014, when he faces a tough reelection battle and has been working single-mindedly (like his counterpart in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo) to avoid passing any measure that can show up as a “tax” in a Republican attack ad.
Malloy declared his personal philosophical opposition to the very notion of the tax, which public-health advocates like Yale’s Rudd Center argue can have the most impact in preventing a major cause of adult-onset diabetes, heart disease and other obesity-related problems, problems that disproportionately afflict among the urban poor. Mayor Harp specialized in public-health issues as a state senator and saw directly the impact of poor nutrition on the poor when she worked at Hill Health Center. Soda is a big culprit in the obesity epidemic, Harp argued in pressing her proposal. Consuming just one sugary drink per day increases a child’s risk of becoming obese by 60 percent, she wrote in her legislative agenda narrative. Harp said Harvard researchers have shown that people drank 16 percent fewer sugary drinks when the prices went up. (Click here to read a full interview with her on the subject.) A 2‑percent tax on sugary drinks would generate $144 million in state revenue per year, Harp’s staff has calculated. That money could be used to increase subsidies for fresh foods and vegetables, she said.
“I think at some point there’s a degree of personal choice to be made,” Malloy said Monday. “We’re going to apply it to soda, but we’re not going to apply it to fruit juice? We’re going to apply it to Gatorade, or we’re not going to apply it to Gatorade?”
He called Connecticut “a healthy state.” “I don’t believe taxing sugar is the way” is the way to make it healthier, he said.
Obamacare Success
Paul Bass Photo
Malloy’s visit Monday morning marked a different public-health milestone. Access Health CT, which oversees the state’s version of Obamacare (aka the Affordable Care Act), has signed up 121,983 enrollees. It had set a goal of signing up 100,000 people for insurance by the end of March. So it hit the milestone seven weeks early.
In other words, Connecticut continues to offer positive news amid the stumbling, flawed national roll-out of Obamacare.
The New Haven storefront office helped the state reach the goal. It’s one of two storefronts in the state where “navigators’ help people sign up. (The other’s in New Britain.)
“All systems are go, and Connecticut is leading the country,” declared U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro. (She’s pictured above at the event with Malloy and Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, who has led the Obamacare effort for the administration; and Julia Santos, who was by affordable insurance thanks to the new law after having been turned down because of a prior heart attack and aneurism.) DeLauro called her support for the Affordable Care Act “one of the proudest votes I have ever cast.”
About a third of the enrollees are under 44 years of age, according to Access Health CEO Kevin Counihan. That’s an important number — the program needs younger, healthier enrollees to remain viable long-term.
The number of uninsured people in the state has dropped from 344,000 in 2010 to around 286,000 today, Counihan said. He predicted that by the end of March the ranks of uninsured in Connecticut will drop below 8 percent of the population; they had risen as high as 9.4 or 9.5 percent.
LiveWorkWait
After the press conference, Malloy was asked about prospects for his administration coming through this year on a commitment to support a private plan to build a $395 million busy new-urbanist mini-city of apartments, stores, offices, hotel and public plaza (pictured) on the site of the old New Haven Coliseum.
The builder, Montreal-based LiveWorkLearnPlay, claims it will spend about $363 million to develop the block. It hopes to begin construction next summer, said Max Reim, principal of the company. Before then, the project will need “state commitments,” he said. Those include approvals for new infrastructure, including from the Office of the State Traffic Administration. The city has approved kicking in $12 million. That leaves $20 million from the state to help pay for dismantling the initial stretch of the Route 34 Connector mini-highway-to-nowhere and reconnecting the street grid.
Malloy spoke at Harp’s inauguration last month of his general support for the project.
When asked on Monday whether the state will see that $20 million approved this year, he said his transportation department is doing “due diligence.” He said crucial questions remain to be answered. Such as:
• “Are the numbers assigned by the developer representative of what it would actually cost?”
• Is the street reconstruction feasible?
• Will the work exacerbate traffic back-ups caused by the current work going on to dismantle the end stretch of the mini-highway in order to make way for the 13-story 100 College St. biomedical tower?