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Health & Fitness

Rep. Scribner On Connecticut's Economy

State Rep. David Scribner Analyzes Connecticut’s Economy

By Scott Benjamin

 

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State Rep. David Scribner (R-107) of Brookfield said Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) has created a phony $505 million budget surplus that is based on “borrowed money” that has to be paid back after the Nov. 2014 gubernatorial election when the governor hopes to capture a second term.

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He said the Office of Fiscal Analysis, the nonpartisan budget arm of the General Assembly, projects a $1.1 billion budget deficit for the fiscal year that will start in June 2015.

“Most of us would not operate our personal finances that way,” Mr. Scribner said Mar. 27, 2014 while speaking to students in a section of PS 104: World Governments, Economies And Cultures at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.

Mr. Scribner, who has served in the General Assembly for 15 years, said Connecticut’s elected officials should focus on reducing spending instead of sending $55 rebate checks to taxpayers, as Mr. Malloy has proposed, since the state has the highest per capita debt in the country.

He said some of that borrowing was done to help resolve at projected $3.6 billion budget deficit that existed when Mr. Malloy took office in January 2010.

“I don’t hold this governor solely responsible for it,” said Mr. Scribner, who serves on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. “I don’t hold the General Assembly responsible for it. This didn’t occur during any single term.”

He said he also opposed former Gov. John Rowland’s (R-Middlebury) decision in the late 1990’s to send rebate checks when the state had a surplus.

Critics have said governors send the rebate checks to boost their approval ratings.

However, Associated Press has reported that Benjamin Barnes - the secretary of the Office of Policy & Management, the governor’s budget office – projected that the rebate checks would generate 1,100 additional jobs.

“Instead of thinking of ways to better use our surplus, we should reduce our obligations,” Mr. Scribner said.

On a related topic, the legislator, who represents Brookfield and parts of Danbury and Bethel, said he has praised Mr. Malloy for trying to increase employment, but that his First Five and Next Five programs are ill-conceived.

The state has provided up to $300 million in incentives for the Maine-based Jackson Labs for construction of a bio-sciences facility at the site of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington.

Mr. Scribner in return, Jackson Labs, which was earlier “spurned” while trying to negotiate a similar deal with the state of Florida, will create 300 additional jobs.

“That’s one million per job,” he said. “I can’t support that.”

However, Mr. Malloy has told the Connecticut Hearst newspapers that the project will create and eco-center that will have a multiplier effect through the creation of professional and service jobs in that area. He noted that public money was used to help establish the Research Triangle in North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham metro area.

University of California Economics Professor Enrico Moretti has stated that over time each brain hub position generates five additional jobs, two of which are either physicians or attorneys, who typically earn well into six figures.

“I don’t think it’s the government’s role to create jobs,” Mr. Scribner said.

He said, instead, Connecticut, which has fewer jobs now than it had in 1989, should lower costs on businesses.

Mr. Scribner said 80 percent of the businesses contacted in one survey indicated that they would set up operations in Connecticut because of the high taxes. He said another survey ranked the state 43rd out of 50 in economic competitiveness.

On another subject, Mr. Scribner said he had voted a day earlier against an increase in the state’s minimum wage from the current $8.60 to $10.10 starting in Jan. 2017 because it would eliminate some jobs.

“A lot of statistics show that many of the businesses that pay that minimum wage will not be able to absorb it,” he said.

Regarding transportation, Mr. Scribner said legislators have erred in taking money out of accounts designed to repair roads and bridges and placed it into the general fund, a practice that he has sought to end.

He also said he opposes reinstituting the highway tolls that were removed nearly 30 years ago under then-Gov. William O’Neill (D-East Hampton).

Mr. Scribner, the ranking Republican House member of the Transportation Committee, said that might deter some customers from traveling, for example, to the Danbury Fair Mall and to Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club in Brookfield, and it also could result in less federal highway funding to the state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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