John Stoehr: Home rule means state will always face a shortfall

The New Fairfield Police Department includes a Connecticut State Police resident trooper. The resident state trooper program is a rare example of cross-border cooperation among towns, and one that should be emulated for the state to see real savings. less The New Fairfield Police Department includes a Connecticut State Police resident trooper. The resident state trooper program is a rare example of cross-border cooperation among towns, and one that should be ... more Photo: H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media Photo: H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close John Stoehr: Home rule means state will always face a shortfall 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

So much can change so quickly. It wasn’t long ago that tax revenues flowing into Hartford looked robust. Not great. Not awful. Good enough, though. The two-year deficit was bad ($1.7 billion), but nothing we couldn’t handle with enough grit and courage.

Now, however, revenues appear to be drying up. The projected two-year deficit has doubled to $5 billion. Life comes at you fast.

Hartford is now in a tizzy trying to figure out a solution. The Democrats under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy are leaning hard on public-employee unions to make concessions. The Republicans will surely want more and surely fight measures to raise revenues. Malloy had ruled out the sales tax. That stance seems to be softening.

But no matter what we do, Connecticut will face similar crises again, and again, and again, as we have biennially for a decade. I think we should think hard about the fundamental reason why. I don’t mean taxes. I don’t mean regulations. Both are related, but not central to the cause of the problem. What I mean is our love for home rule.

Home rule means the people control their destinies. It is and always will be a beloved tradition in our state, region and country. It is the purest expression of the democratic way of life. It was realized completely in 1960 when lawmakers abolished county governments, which had already been pretty weak. Home rule is also a good way to find yourself in front of a bankruptcy judge.

Instead of eight or 20 or 50 police departments, we have almost 100. Same for fire departments and other emergencies services. Same or similar goes for public schools, garbage collection, park services and on and on. Having 169 municipalities pursuing their individual destinies according to the democratic will of a free people is an amazing fact in the history of the world. But it also means massive duplication of effort and it means paying for the same thing many times over.

The current crisis was years in the making. Sound investments were delayed. Pensions were not funded. Bad accounting always made the fiscal darkness seem brighter. But even if all these issues were fixed, our structural problem would be the same. So much of the public’s money goes to paying for the same thing 169 times. It’s really no wonder we can’t weather a crisis when tax revenues take a hit.

I’m not the first or last to point this out, of course. Regionalism has been a watchword for years. But it has never caught on, in large part because rich suburbs get suspect of poor cities when one of them, like Bridgeport, starts talking about “sharing services.” To rich suburbs like Fairfield, “sharing” sounds a lot like “giving away free.”

The problem isn’t municipalities don’t share. It’s that they can’t. And because they can’t, we find ourselves in a chicken-and-egg situation. We don’t have the political will to change the law, but won’t have the political will until we change the law — and realize the benefits of cost-sharing. How else can you explain a no-brainer bill that died in committee last week that would have at least begun the slow evolution toward sharing services and away from waste?

I don’t think we should, or could, go backwards and somehow reinstate country governments. But the current crisis does provide an opportunity to take a second look at the cost-sharing bill, fine-tune it, and see it through the General Assembly. Nothing focuses the mind quite like a crisis. We should be focusing on the right things.

The Democrats in Hartford are focused on revenue and there is something to be said about that. But they should focus on costs, too. Fortunately, with demands for labor concession, they are. The Republicans, for their part, are focused on costs, but should look beyond the public unions for ways to cut them. If they are seriously about fiscal discipline, they’d inform their constituents in Darien, New Canaan, Greenwich and elsewhere the time has come to share. The results of that request would tell you a lot about the power of home rule.

John Stoehr is a lecturer in political science at Yale University. He can be reached at johnastoehr@gmail.com.