8 February—A clear indication that 2022 is a gubernatorial election year in Connecticut is that Ned Lamont, the state’s comfortably seated governor (as if you didn’t know), has announced that he wants to reduce taxes. Oh boy, gosh, wow, and golly gee. Touting his administration’s allegedly prudent fiscal management, Ned boasts that he and his comfortable Democrat majority in the General Assembly have turned a $3.7 billion deficit when he assumed office (which was left by dastardly Dannel Malloy) into a projected $1.7 billion operating surplus as he hopes to stay in office.

Forget that the fed has given Connecticut even more than originally anticipated in COVID-related handouts, among other largess that covers up the state’s real, mostly long-term money woes. Because that’s precisely what Ned’s friends are doing. But remember that Ned is proposing what sounds like an impressive $336 million in tax relief. Because that’s all that counts in election years.

Broken down, however, that $336 million comes out to what are really piddling, relatively insignificant reductions for individuals and business entities. Sure, it’s nice—as well as unusual—to get any reductions at all in taxes and to save money anywhere you can, but Ned Lamont’s thoughtful benevolence is simply a ploy to get him re-elected. But you can’t really blame him because that’s what politicians do.

A case in point is his plan to lower the mill-rate cap on local motor vehicle property taxes from 45 mills to 29 mills, with the state reimbursing local governments for their revenue loss. The voters—and keep in mind that everything politicians do is aimed at voters—most affected by the lowered cap on motor vehicle mill rates are those living in cities, usually cited as distressed areas. Like Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport, and Waterbury.

The Borough of Litchfield is really a distressed inner city any way you look at it, but that doesn’t count.

Denizens of distressed cities are the Democrat base and must be humored and stroked lest they don’t bother to vote. It’s a pretty safe assumption they won’t vote Republican, so just getting them out out—the earlier and more often, the better—is the trick. These days, of course, voters don’t even have to come out to do the dirty.

If Ned Lamont and his irresponsible cronies in the General Assembly were to put a mill-rate cap on real property in addition to motor vehicles, that would be certain beyond any question to get him and them re-elected. Over and over again. That most certainly would put Connecticut into an even faster, more violent fiscal death spiral, to be sure, but it’s something for future generations to worry about.

So why should the short-sighted, self-serving whores of Hartford worry?