27 March—Connecticut probably doesn’t lead the league in stupid legislation proposed or enacted. But the state certainly has its share. Last week, for instance, the General Assembly’s Environment Committee (surprisingly) had the good sense to strip from Gov. Ned Lamont’s comprehensive bill on trash disposal an utterly stupid provision to charge municipalities a penalty—euphemistically rationalized as a “disposal fee”—of five dollars a ton for all the garbage they ship out of state.

Connecticut has had serious problems with garbage disposal—a.k.a. solid waste management—for decades, ever since most towns were forced to close their dumps—a.k.a. sanitary landfills—in order to support the incompetent management of the quasi-public Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA).

CRRA strong-armed towns into buying its services. I remember when, over four decades ago, a CRRA functionary—a former local TV newsreader—told Litchfield’s first selectman, in the presence of a selectman and me, the town had no choice but to send its trash to CRRA and if it didn’t the town would regret it.

Well, First Selectman Ted Litwin got up out of his desk chair, looked down at the CRRA clown, and told him to get the hell out of his office and what to do on his way out of town. As Selectman Charlie Dobos and I saw the little guy to the door, he warned, “Don’t fuck with the state, guys. We’re bigger than the Mafia.”

It turned out that the little guy was right. There was really no choice to speak of. Even the Mafia—which would have been preferable to CRRA—was out. Although CRRA, an effective monopoly, was a screw-up from the very start, Connecticut politics and the politicians mismanaging it kept it going. So it got our garbage one way or the other.

In 2014, CRRA changed its name to MIRA, the Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority. Innovation? Really? MIRA is “a public instrumentality and political subdivision of the State of Connecticut”—i.e., a quasi-public organization that pays well-connected people, often former legislators, to screw up at taxpayers’ expense. (Connecticut state bureaucracies frequently change their names while continuing to screw up as they always have done.)

Suffice to say, MIRA has continued to screw up just like CRRA and is a public instrumentality limping while paying its incompetent management handsomely. Litchfield was among the municipalities that told MIRA where to go a couple of years ago when its mismanaged and poorly maintained Hartford facility bit the dust, causing it to raise its fees.

Five bucks a ton for shipping Connecticut’s precious unrecyclables to deserving states certainly wouldn’t have paid for resurrecting MIRA’s Hartford facility or improving its domestic resources, but taxpayers’ billions will. So wait and see. MIRA will rise from its ashes and be the compulsory destinaton for all of Connecticut’s trash.

But Lamont’s five-dollar penalty was undeniably stupid . . .