U.S. Americans worry that public funds for essential services are being diverted to the obscenely rich. They fear that it’s happening in the dark, where we cannot witness, let alone fight, this thievery.

I’m scared too but not surprised, because I spent about a year of my life tracking the millions that General Dynamics Electric Boat gets from Connecticut taxpayers and how state law explicitly prohibits us from getting information about what public benefits (if any) result.  I faced down a table full of lawyers defending the privacy of this highly profitable corporation  (General Dynamics netted 3.8 billion last year) as I was denied answers about where my (and your) money went.

Elon Musk has nothing on Electric Boat.

Let me begin at the beginning: In 2018 Connecticut pledged $83 million in aid to Electric Boat, ostensibly so that EB would expand Groton operations, create jobs and purchase more from in-state vendors. As this five-year program was wrapping up, the War Resisters League asked me to investigate whether EB created the economic benefits the state was promised.

The first step was obvious: EB had to report annually to the state Department of Economic and Community Development on payroll, in-state purchases and other information that would indicate whether it was acting as a stimulus to the  economy. I requested copies of those reports under the Freedom of Information Act. I received documents that were largely redacted (Picture a blacked-out letter from a Soviet gulag). I appealed to the state’s Freedom of Information Commission, where my request was opposed not only by the state but by Electric Boat. The commissioners seemed sympathetic – after all I was asking about the return on the investment of my tax dollars – but agreed with EB’s counsel that state law explicitly includes FOIA exemptions for businesses getting assistance from DECD.

To state the obvious: corporate welfare should not get its own special exemption from FOIA disclosure.

I did get some satisfaction from FOIA requests. I learned how many EB employees qualify for SNAP and Medicaid. Not a lot (316), but the common wisdom is that EB jobs are good jobs, period. People with good jobs don’t need food stamps. Now that Musk and company are dismantling the federal safety net, I doubt these workers will get raises to keep the cupboards full. I learned that EB contests property tax assessments, so its valuations to the towns where it resides, Groton, New London, and Norwich, are reduced by millions. That’s money made up by the average homeowner, or by landlords who pass expenses on to their tenants.

I started asking myself, “If EB is such a treasure, why isn’t New London more like Greenwich?” Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather hang out in New London, with its far superior music scene. But the poverty rate is 20 percent in New London, with racial disparities that make it much higher in some communities. Furthermore, EB’s presence may be raising housing costs. One bedroom apartment rents rose 37% in New London from pre-pandemic 2020 to 2023 – the biggest jump in the state.

Imagine the state spent the $83 million it handed to EB on the region’s schools, microloans for small businesses, green conversions, and so on? Seems like a better strategy to fight poverty.

Is EB really the best investment Connecticut can make? I’ve been unable to get the data necessary to answer that question. I suspect that had the answer been “yes,”  the governor and EB’s CEO would have held a joint press conference to trumpet the numbers that I was denied.

About now, some readers are probably saying, “She was working for the War Resisters League. She’s some peacenik.” Guilty as charged.

But I set out to answer a financial question, not a moral one: “Do Connecticut taxpayers get our money’s worth for the millions we hand to Electric Boat?” I found no evidence that we do – and I looked hard.

People have different visions of what they want from government. That’s why we have elections. But no one that I know thinks government exists to take money away from the poor and middle class and jam it into the pockets of the rich. I don’t know why we tolerate it on the state or the federal level.

Joanne Sheehan of the War Resisters League and I will lead a discussion about the EB report at All Souls Unitarian Universal Community Room, 19 Jay St., New London, at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, April 17.

Please consider joining us. We still have some semblance of democracy. We should use it.

Colleen Shaddox of East Haddam is co-author with Joanne Samuel Goldblum of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty.

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