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Senate prez Martin Looney at WNHH FM: “Government can work.”
Light up a joint. Place $10 on the Mets. Don’t worry about a local tax hike. It’s OK: This is the new Connecticut — the one Martin Looney promised would arrive this year.
New Haven’s Looney presided over a momentous session of the State Senate this year: Along with his urban colleagues, the senator shepherded to passage the legalization of recreational marijuana, the legalization of sports betting and internet gaming, and a systemic municipal-aid overhaul that’s sending an extra $50 million to the city this year, obviating the need for budget cuts or tax hikes.
Legalized cannabis use has already taken effect, with rules for its sale (including priority for local entrepreneurs) on the way. Sports betting should be legal well before the NFL playoffs, now that the governor has completed a needed renegotiation of gaming compacts with Native American tribes. New Haven city government’s new fiscal year has begun with a jump in Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) on tax-exempt property from $41 to $91 million.
In concert with his fellow New Haven legislators, Looney, who has represented the city in Hartford since 1980, has been pushing for all those changes for a decade or longer. They raised the issues each year, gathered data, built support, negotiated with their colleagues.
Looney appeared on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program last December to predict that all three long-sought proposals would finally become law in 2021.
Looney returned to WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program Thursday to run down how it happened, and to reflect on what that says about governing in an age of cynicism, legislative gridlock, and political dysfunction. (Click on the above video to watch the full interview.)
“I believe government can work. It can do great things,” he said. “It takes patience, some creativity, and [seeing] how far other people are willing to go and what constraints they are operating under.”
Timing
What made this year different?
For PILOT and municipal aid, a combination of strategy and federal money.
Cities like New Haven were a lonely voice pushing for PILOT changes over the years. They received as little as 25 percent on the dollar in reimbursements under the PILOT program for revenue lost to state-mandated property tax exemptions. They have much more tax-exempt property than most other communities; in “eds and meds” New Haven, the percentage of exempt property on the rolls has topped 60 percent. Most other communities didn’t feel the same loss, Looney observed. So they felt no need to support changing the PILOT formula.
This year he shopped around a new way of envisioning PILOT: Creating three tiers based on how much tax-exempt property towns have, and their net per-capita grand list. While Greenwich has a $740,000 net per capita grand list, New Britain’s is only $60,000. Many towns, such as in northeastern Connecticut, have figures closer to New Britain’s. Looney proposed including all communities with per capita grand lists under $100,000 in the program, and reimbursing them at either 30, 40 or 50 percent based on how much tax-exempt property they have.
Under that plan, many more communities stood to gain. Republican-led North Haven, for instance, where Quinnipiac University has increased its footprint.
As the session progressed, Looney’s plan attracted bipartisan support in formerly resistant towns. Support came with a caveat: Wealthier, more conservative suburbs were willing to give cities like New Haven more under PILOT as long as their own residents didn’t lose money on the deal.
Most years that would present a big problem. But not in a pandemic. Federal relief dollars surged into the state. That gave the state the money to cover increases for hardest-hit cities and towns without having to take that aid from other programs serving wealthier communities.
Looney was asked Thursday whether that support will remain for the new PILOT formula a couple of years hence when the federal pandemic-relief river turns dry.
He expressed confidence that the new system will last. “The principle has been established,” he said, and codified into law.
Good Laws Make Good Neighbors?
CT News Junkie Photo
Foxwoods casino.
Democrats have consistently increased their majorities in Hartford. The State Senate went from an 18 – 18 Democrat-Republican split in 2017 to 22 – 14 in 2019, then 24 – 12 in 2021 (since back to 23 – 13 as a result of a special election). That Democratic surge also helped cannabis legalization to pass, a measure New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield and State Reps. Robyn Porter and Juan Candelaria have in particular championed. Sports betting had more bipartisan support.
In both cases, what ultimately made 2021 the year for passage was activity beyond Connecticut’s borders: Neighboring states were, one by one, legalizing recreational marijuana use along with sports betting. At this point the state was simply losing out on revenue going to Massachusetts or New York.
Watching how other states crafted cannabis legalization also helped Connecticut learn from mistakes and improve its own law, for instance in ensuring that small entrepreneurs from drug war-ravaged cities get a shot at the business opportunities, Looney said.
He was asked if legal toking and wagering makes for a better city.
“It gives people more freedoms,” he responded. “It makes the law less hypocritical” by no longer “banning” activities people engaged in anyway.
Looney led the passage of other changes in how we live beyond the three marquee laws this year. Insurance companies can no longer pull a bait and switch on people’s prescription drug coverage: A new Looney-backed law prevents them from changing formularies (what drugs are covered, how much co-pays are due) in the middle of a policy year. Medical practices now must follow the same debt-collection rules hospitals face under a previous Looney-backed law, aimed at preventing them from seizing patients’ homes or failing to tell indigent patients about available charitable aid.
Also, low-income and lower-middle-wage families will collect 30 percent more in annual state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC) thanks to another change made this year to a former Looney-backed law. (Read more about that here.)
Left For 2022
Some elements of Looney/New Haven’s legislative wish list remain to be tackled next year after failing in 2021.
Chief among them is tax reform. Looney and progressives in the legislature failed again to increase marginal tax rates of the wealthiest people in Connecticut or enacting a separate tax on capital gains and dividend income above a certain floor — say $500,000 for a single filer and $1 million for a household.
The problem wasn’t Republicans. It was a Democrat: Gov. Ned Lamont of Greenwich, who characterizes as “punishing success” asking billionaires to pay tax rates comparable to those charged to custodians or nursing assistants or cab drivers.
Lamont this year took off the table even the discussion of raising taxes on multimillionaires.
Looney said he sees some hope in a decision by the legislature to require the first state study since 2014 of the difference in what the wealthiest and the rest of us pay in taxes. The 2014 study found that the lowest-income households (earning up to $48,000 a year in adjusted gross income) paid 23.6 percent of their pay on state and local taxes. Middle-class households paid 13 percent. The top 10 percent of earners, 10 percent. And the top 1 percent? Just 7.5 percent — less than a third of what the lowest-income taxpayers fork over.
Assuming the new study is done early enough in the session, reform advocates hope it will offer ammunition when they raise the issue again next year.
Lamont also thwarted efforts to enact a “public option” that would enable a government health plan to compete with private plans to offer people in Connecticut quality insurance they can afford.
As Looney can be the first to tell you after a world-changing year at the Capitol, it takes time, and repeated, steady advocacy, consensus-building, and a little fortuitous timing to get there.