March 21, 2019 @ 6:39 pm

It’s high time Connecticut voters had the right and ability to enact legislation sidestepping —even in opposition to— the General Assembly; or at the very least vetoing legislation enacted by the General Assembly. We’re talking about statewide direct voter-initiative referendums.

Assuming that it’s possible for Connecticut to impose tolls on roads constructed, reconstructed or maintained in part with federal dollars, how can the investment required to install toll gantries and cameras be funded before any tolls are actually collected? The answer is simple and straightforward: issue state revenue bonds, to be repaid from the future revenue stream generated by tolls. State revenue bonds issued for a public purpose are tax-exempt. Accordingly, they would likely bear a lower interest rate than any loan granted by a private entity looking for a rate of return that would not only cover the cost of any capital that it borrows, but also provide a profit to the entity.

A “quagmire” describes an extraordinarily distressing situation that all of the options for extraction would probably just make worse. The term aptly describes both falling into quicksand and last November’s election for the 140th Connecticut House of Representatives district in Stratford, where an egregious error by elections officials resulted in 70 votes being cast in the wrong voting district, in an election where the margin of victory (for Democratic incumbent Phil Young) was 14 votes.