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Connecticut Needs Good Paying Jobs and a
Strong, Innovative Public Sector
Printed in the Mystic River Press, 2 May '02
I was dismayed to read that Mary Villa has resigned as Stonington's Director of Planning. Her obvious concern for the region and her innovative approach to development, as with her Smart Growth proposal for the area along Rt. 2 in Pawcatuck, are exactly what are needed in Stonington and the surrounding area. The financial travails of our towns have been in the news constantly of late, and to hope that we can currently afford to hire more assistants for the planning department is vain. Villa's parting words, that "the workload is staggering," reflect on a system out of balance, from the ground up.
While the working people in this region get progressively poorer (real wages have dropped by at least 3% on average from 1968, with the lowest wages dropping substantially more), business productivity and profits continue to rise. In fact, if wages had kept pace with productivity in the US, the national minimum wage would now be $13.80. In CT, we are fighting just to bring our minimum wage up to $7.00 per hour.
Ironically, the share of taxes paid by business in CT has declined from 13.3% of state revenues in the mid-90's to only 7.2% this fiscal year. There are actually companies in CT which not only pay no taxes, they are written a check by the state at the end of the year. Simultaneously, as lamented recently by Stonington's finance board chairman, the state continues to reduce its level of funding to its towns and cities. This leaves towns with too-small budgets and too-high taxes - and far too often, with no one in the state legislature willing to heed our desperate plight.
Worse than their tax payments (or lack thereof), however, is the fact that many large companies pay wages too low to support workers. Fully 38% of jobs in CT pay sub-poverty level wages, and the poverty level is well below the Living Wage level (that at which a worker can actually support a family without public assistance). Not only are individuals paying most of the taxes, but they are subsidizing these companies, by providing welfare assistance for the workers after the company underpays them. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, over 80% of workers at or near minimum wage are adults, many with families. These people are trying to earn a living, and corporations should be cooperating in that effort.
More than 80 Living Wage ordinances are in effect around the country now; these ordinances require large businesses (usually those above a certain level of profit) to pay responsible wages to their employees. The affected regions enjoy the benefit of immediate increased spending within the community (a benefit not typically experienced when profits are given to a CEO as a lavish bonus). Furthermore, many business owners have admitted that the company benefits from improved worker morale and reduced absentee rates. Living Wage legislation has been won through grassroots mobilizing, and has produced coalitions among people who might previously have thought they had no common ground.
Another movement which has led to broad-based coalitions, and helped to generate strong and healthy communities, is the movement toward sustainable development, dubbed Smart Growth by Governor Parris Glendening of Maryland. Smart Growth planning preserves open space and farmlands, incorporates transit options, and - crucial to our region for the near future - provides affordable housing as part of the overall scheme. If we want to prevent an overrun of subdivisions, strip malls and superhighways, and to ward off the impending housing crisis, now is the time to develop and implement this kind of plan.
We need to come together to explore sustainable development models such as Ms. Villa and her assistant Barbara Blycker have introduced. We need to come together to obtain financial support from prospering businesses, mainly in the form of a Living Wage requirement for the many large businesses in the area that can afford higher pay rates. We need come together to make structural changes in the system, to restore balance, so that we can afford to keep good people from burning out as they work for us.
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