Former Incompetent Connecticut Governor Daniel Malloy Flees to Maine: Why Does Maine Want Him?

Governor Malloy is a prime example, one of many, of Democratic governors in thrall to the public employee unions, especially the teachers unions. Their response is always to raise taxes – not to control spending. Eight years of raising taxes! Eight years of raising taxes while tax revenue from the top 100 paying Connecticut taxpayers dropped 45% from 2011-12 to today. Raising taxes on a shrinking economic base is economic suicide, but they do it anyway. Governor Malloy even promised in his reelection campaign in 2015 not to further raise taxes. He immediately raised them after reelection. His successor Ned Lamont pledged during his campaign last year to not raise taxes. Of course he’s raising taxes. GE absconded to the state previously known under equally incompetent Governor Michael Dukakis as “Taxachusetts.” UPS left for Georgia three decades ago. Hedge funds have left for Florida. Taxes keep rising. Businesses, entrepreneurs, retirees are fleeing Connecticut. $100,000+ incomes defect to the Sun Belt. Florida, North Carolina, and Texas look attractive to businesses and individuals – low taxes, low cost of living, low regulation, low corruption. The four states with the largest percent of out-of-state moving are dark blue New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey – four states with high taxes, high costs of living, excessive regulation, and high rates of corruption. Connecticut and Illinois are in a race to the bottom. Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury are in bad fiscal shape. The reviled Daniel Malloy, ex-Governor of Connecticut, is leaving behind his legacy in Connecticut of high taxes, low economic growth, and rising deficits. He is abandoning Connecticut for Maine. He’s leaving Connecticut with a 21% approval rating. But why Maine? Maine is a beautiful, wonderful state with a demographic problem: an aging work force and shrinking high school population. The four states with the largest percent of out-of-state moving are New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey – High taxes, high costs of living, excessive regulation, and high rates of corruption. Maine’s problem is that it lacks an industrial base. It has farming (think Maine Potatoes), LL. Bean and the outlet stores that have blossomed around L.L. Bean in South Freeport, Maine. Maine has skiing and tourism, second homes for New Yorkers, Bath Iron Works, Baxter State Park, Mount Katahdin and the jumping off point of the Appalachian Trial, prestigious private colleges of Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby and a good public higher education system, but business is not moving into Maine. Maine is essentially a rural state with a land mass equal to the rest of New England with a low population base. Portland is a great city, but it does not typify the remainder of the state. The Trustees of the University of Maine just hired the former Connecticut governor to be Chancellor of the University of Maine system. They want him to bring together the state colleges and community colleges as “One University,” excluding the University of Maine. He performed a similar merger of Connecticut’s public institutions of higher education with what can best be described as mixed results. The University of Maine has a high acceptance rate, but low admissions rate. Many of the state’s top high school students go out of state. The state public colleges and universities face deferred maintenance, a declining high grade population, while the state has the oldest workforce in the nation. They’re paying him $350,000 annually for five years, up from the $277,00 his predecessor earned. Daniel Malloy can talk the talk – walking the walk remains to be seen. Apparently Cathy Malloy, his wife is staying behind in Connecticut.