Our Reps Sticking up for Corporations

If this is the first time you are looking at a DTC communication, welcome!  If not, you probably know that it’s budget season.  So the CT GOP is looking to take advantage of the fact that towns are struggling by unveiling a state budget plan that includes something called the School/Taxpayers Relief & Affordability, or STRAP (as in the bootstraps they usually demand that we all lift ourselves up by).   The bill would award $420 million (nice) of taxpayer relief and generous amounts of aid to local  schools.  In many ways it’s the perfect CT GOP play, looks great on paper but stacked together with toothpicks by speculative assessments like an unsettled lawsuit against remote workers living in NY and spending cap violations.  Never mind that they’ve been howling incessantly about fiscal guardrails and spending as best practice for the better part of a decade, particularly when a liberal proposal has a price tag that upsets their base (anonymous corporate wonks at the Yankee Institute).   There’s a  couple good proposals in this budget like raising income tax relief eligibility and eliminating regressive licensing fees, but even their most serious budget proposal in years found a way to work in attacks on some of their favorite targets; undocumented folks and government workers.

Things you post when you care about the working class

At the local Board of Finance meeting this week, misinformation peddler (technically a Democrat but really an independent agent of chaos) Nancy Barrett asked First Selectmen Freda when we’d know how much money we’d be getting from the STRAP plan that just passed.  Folks, this plan is not a real plan and will not even get a vote, let alone pass, especially in a Democratic-heavy legislature.   It’s an opportunity for small town Reps to make it looks like they’re pushing for reform that the big bad Dems are standing in the way of, just as Ms. Barrett likes to pretend she is fighting municipal bloat by fighting to lay off teachers.    CT Congressional Dems for their part made a huge push for ECS reform this year as a more permanent solution for the education funding woes that haunt is.  It’s unclear if Governor Lamont, who had previously proposed a cynical one-time $500 million dispersement, will let it happen though.

Slowly but surely, bills are emerging from committee and making their way to the floor for a vote.  Yaccarino and Cicarella even supported a few of them, such as bills on Entertainment tickets resales, education rights for homeless children, and a bill banning former cops with misconduct charges from being SROs. 

Mostly though, they’ve been a reliable duo of naysayers in their respective committees though.  Yaccarino voted against pushing forward bills on Renewable power and consumer protections, taxing beverages to create a universal free schools meal program, and creating a surcharge for companies that replace their workers with AI. His anti-regulatory bonafides are intact.  If you are a business doing shady shit in Connecticut, Dave’s got your back.

Paul’s no votes on his committees also signal his values. Like his partner in the house, Cicarella voted against consumer data protections and digital surveillance.    Of course, he also voted against anything that might place limits on the ICE’s constitution-defyin’, nurse-murderin’ power to abduct and terrorize, such as bills that restrict the use of License plate readers, a bill protecting churches, government buildings, and healthcare facilities from unnecessary harassment by masked gestapo thugs, and even a bill that would protect our elections from being policed by ICE.   Well, I know you’re thinking; “the CT GOP, despite being a group of people who, as a rule, would never be able to pass a citizenship test or identify most Latin American countries on a map, just despise undocumented folks as a rule.  No number of civil liberties could get in the way of that seething hatred.  Surely though, Paul cares about workers, renters, and healthcare workers?”  Alas, he also rejected in committee worker protections against nondisclosure agreements,  a just cause eviction bill, and a bill that would also CT providers to offer telehealth support for things like abortion and gender-affirming care GAC.  Don’t worry though, he agrees with his Democratic colleagues on a couple things, such as that the volume in those dang ads is too high. How brave.