Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland addressed a Yankee Institute luncheon May 25, sharing his thoughts on the state’s budget and economic future.
Rowland’s political career ended when he resigned the Governorship, pleaded guilty to one corruption charge and served 10 months in federal prison. Now he co-hosts the “Church and State” radio broadcast with pastor Will Marotti weekdays from 3 to 6 p.m. on WTIC AM.
“I’m used to having three hours to make my point,” Rowland said to the audience of almost 150. “I’ll try to do it in the 30 minutes.”
“I know that I’m out of office,” Rowland said. “One, people will tell you what they really think of you, like ‘You’re getting fat.’ And the other one is out on the golf course. You know that 10 foot put that for 20 years I was picking up as a gimme. No longer any good.”
“I chalk up this great turnout today to morbid curiosity,” he said.
Rowland told the story about how, weeks after being sworn in as Governor, he told his staff he wanted to change the way state employees answered the phone.
“I want accountability. I want state employees answering the phones to give their name, very valuable information,” he recalled.
“I drive my kids crazy at a restaurant. The first question I ask a waiter or waitress is, ‘What’s your name?’ Once you have that incredible piece of information, the service is impeccable.”
He said his advisors told him, “You can’t do that. You can’t tell the state employees what to do.”
A staffer suggested using email, new technology at the time, to tell the state employees how to answer the phones.
Rowland said he wrote a short script that went something like, “Good morning, Department of Motor Vehicles. This is John Rowland. How may I help you?”
“I thought that was brilliant.”
When the email was sent to state employees, he said, “All hell breaks loose.”
“’You can’t tell us what to do,’” he said. “’We have to have union negotiations on this.’ Lawsuits were being filed.”
“So I would entertain myself driving around in the car by calling all the departments and agencies to see how they would answer the phone.”
“I knew we were in deep trouble when we had numerous state employees calling in saying, ‘Why do we have to use the Governor’s name when we answer the phone?”
“True story.”
“That lasted about four weeks and I lost. They wore me down. I lost the battle, but I stole the concept of accountability from Gen. William Westmoreland.”
“He tells the story. He’s the Supreme Allied Commander. He calls down to the garage one day and says, ‘Hey, how many vehicles do we have here on base in the garage?’ The kid said, ‘Well we have 115 passenger vehicles. We’ve got 42 trucks, 13 busses.’”
“And he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got one jeep for that stupid general.”
“So Westmoreland said, ‘Young man, do you know who this is?’”
“He said, ‘No.’”
“He said, ‘This is Gen. William Westmoreland.”
“Dead silence.”
Finally, the young soldier said, “‘General, do you know who this is?’”
The general replied, “‘No, I do not.’”
“He said, ‘Well, goodbye, stupid.”
“So, if you remember anything today, perhaps you remember that we should all try to have personal service and answer the phones a little bit differently.”
“I would like to create for you a visual. And the visual is a ledger,” he said, moving to the state’s budget debate.
He said to think about the other 49 states on one side and Connecticut on the other.
“I propose that because, right now, that’s the battleground. We’re doing battle with 49 other states to figure out how we’re going to promote jobs.”
“Now let me assume that that’s our goal. Let me assume that in this recession, we want to produce jobs.”
“So the first question is, OK, who produces jobs?”
“In Washington, D.C., – even in Washington, D.C., – they’re debating whether they’re going to cut spending by billions or trillions. That hasn’t happened in quite a while.”
“All of those states for the most part are trying to figure out how they can be more competitive. They’re either cutting taxes, holding the line on taxes, cutting spending, going after collective bargaining, taking on the political power of the unions, coming up with some pro-business initiatives, tax incentives and the list goes on and on and on.”
“Someone could say, ‘That’s just Wisconsin.’”
“Nope, it’s Wisconsin, it’s Indiana, it’s Ohio – and it’s New York State. That, I think, is the one that hits us right between the eyes: Andrew Cuomo holding the line on taxes, cutting spending, taking on the unions. That’s dramatic. It’s not just those crazy people out in the Midwest.”
“Now, look at the next step. What’s going on with what I call the Charlie Brown series? The Charlie Brown series is this fascination with federal funding and a lot of states are getting the joke. And it is a joke. And the joke is, ‘Hey, if you will only spend so much money for Amtrak or highways or bridges or magic busses or some other crazy idea, we’ll give you a bunch of money.’”
“State’s aren’t buying it.”
“When I say the Charlie Brown thing, I’m talking about the federal government playing Lucy and holding the football saying, “OK, here’s the money we’re going to give you for highways or for Amtrak or for something else.”
“And of course like a bunch of dopes we go running up to kick the football like Charlie Brown and it gets pulled from us.”
“In the mean time we’re spending millions and zillions on studies, preparation, analysis, architectural stuff and blah, blah, blah.”
“And by the way that’s our money. We’ve been led to believe that the federal money is some magic pile of money that doesn’t count or something.”
Rowland said the UConn Health Center is another example of the state falling for the gimmick of federal funding.
“We were going to get $100 million. It was in the bank.”
“We thought $350 million was a good deal then with $100 million from the feds and it fell apart.”
“We saw it with some of the highway funds a short while ago.”
“And of course, my favorite, the magic bus.”
“On the show we would say, ‘Will one person please call in and tell us they are going to take the magic bus.’”
“For those of you who might not know what the magic bus is. It’s this make-believe bus, busses, in a bus tramway, that’s going to go from New Britain to Hartford, Connecticut, 9.6 miles and it’s going to cost $656 million, but, but most of it’s federal money so it doesn’t count. Except for the fact that we have to put $130 million up.”
“Secondly, no one’s going to use it. How many of you are going to drive to New Britain, get out of your cars and get on a magic bus to go nine miles to end up here in Hartford at maybe a location you’re not even going to. And who wants to give up their car? You know what the car is? Talk to your 16-year-old. That car is freedom. But the feds, Obama and a lot of other governors, they’re buying into this, ‘We’re going to build stuff. We’re going to make stuff. We’re going to use this mass-transit thing. And everybody’s going to get into it.’”
“Finally, the bus driver calls in,” Rowland said. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’m the bus driver. I know how many buses go. He says, ‘At best 2,400 people a day.’
“By the way, these people are already in buses going to Hartford. So we take them out of the existing buses and put them into the magic bus.”
Rowland said the project, including borrowing costs, adds up to $900 million.
“I’ll be conservative, $60 million a mile.”