Last week, Connecticut’s bad economic future just got worse. And taxpayers in every state should take notice.
The reminders of Connecticut’s disastrous economy are all too familiar, and even before last week, 2016 had been a doozy of a year. General Electric started things off in January. After a bitter and public feud with Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy over the use of in-state businesses like G.E. as a “piggy bank,” the company announced that it would relocate its headquarters and hundreds of jobs to Massachusetts, of all places.
This June, a study by George Mason University ranked Connecticut 50th among US states and Puerto Rico in overall “fiscal health.” It cited a kitchen sink of ugly statistics like per-capita debt ($505), total debt (about $21 billion) and Connecticut’s desperate use of debt to pay for routine spending. Mundane details aside, Connecticut’s “fiscal health” ranked ahead of only Puerto Rico’s.
But…
