In my business career, I always try to be objective about judging success and failure—it is the only way to improve performance.  Now that I am a legislator, I plan on doing the same.  I have written in this column about many of the successes of the General Assembly this year:  passing a budget with no new income or sales taxes, adopting my jobs creation bill, and increasing education funding to our towns by 9-23%. 

But I think we have to be honest about our failures as well.  In some areas, we voted down good bills that should have been passed.  In others, we failed to even debate some critical areas facing Connecticut.  I think the General Assembly needs to address these issues in a better way when we come back in session in February.

Lowering Taxes.  While the General Assembly managed to pass a state budget that will cause little to no new financial pain to taxpayers, we certainly could have done better.  Connecticut has the highest total tax burden in the nation, and we need to find ways to limit government growth and lower taxes on the middle class.  Connecticut’s growing projected surplus is now hovering at about $1 billion—which shows that we can return money to the taxpayers

My proposal is to automatically return to taxpayers half of any surplus dollars by raising the exemption levels of the state income tax.  If we passed my proposal this year, families in Shelton and Stratford would have a $300-400 tax cut.  I also co-sponsored a bill to exempt pension income from state income taxes to help seniors living on a fixed income.  Finally, I proposed some immediate energy relief by suspending the 25 cents per gallon gas tax for the summer, and eliminating the 6% sales tax on electricity.  While the Democratic majority voted these proposals down, and I will push to have them included in the budget next year.

Reducing Health Care Costs.  The General Assembly has been addressing the issue of covering more people without insurance, but has failed to address containing rising health care cost for the rest of us.  The key to lowering healthcare costs is preventative medicine.  It not only cheaper to prevent disease than to cure it, but is better for the patient to not get sick in the first place!  I have proposed giving individuals, companies, and health care providers economic incentives to encourage preventative care.  For example, premiums should be lower for people who get regular physicals and exams as directed by their doctor.  By preventing diseases, we will lower the cost of healthcare for all of us.  We should take a closer look at those proposals in the 2008 legislative session.

Solving Transportation Issues.  Everyone who lives in our part of the state has to agree that Connecticut’s transportation problems are hurting our quality of life.  We need to both increase the capacity of our roads and increase the convenience of our mass transit.  The state did a great job expanding the Sikorsky Bridge, which has eliminated a major bottleneck on the Merritt Parkway.  We need to do the same at other points along our highways.

At the same time we need to continue to make mass transportation more convenient for people.  Governor Rell led an initiative to invest $1 billion in buying new Metro North trains, which is a great start.  But we also need to address parking and what happens when people get off the trains.  I believe we need to build a parking garage build at Stratford Train Station, and make it easier for people to get to work from train stations in lower Fairfield County.

Earlier this year, I proposed legislation that would have required the state Department of Transportation to establish a pilot program of comprehensive bus service from Metro North stations in Norwalk, Greenwich and Stamford to major places of business in those communities.  Despite support from the state Department of Transportation and legislators from both political parties, my proposal did not become law this year. But I plan on continuing the fight to get this pilot program implemented.

Finally, we need to take a comprehensive view of safety on our roads and bridges.  We will hopefully be passing a bonding package in September that contains money for bridge reconstruction.  The Department of Transportation is starting work next year on the Moses Wheeler Bridge on I-95 in Stratford, but we also need to get work started on the Commodore Hull Bridge on Route 8 in Shelton.

Eliminating Anti-Job Regulation.  I am ecstatic that the General Assembly adopted my proposal to give tax credits to companies that create ten or more jobs a year. However, I also proposed making Connecticut a more attractive place for businesses by thoroughly reviewing the costs and benefits of all our state regulations – and eliminating those that cost businesses money without accomplishing any worthwhile, public interest goals. As it stands now, Connecticut businesses are suffering death by a thousand cuts due to regulations that have the unintended consequences of discouraging expansion and job creation.  We need to set up a systematic way to review existing regulation using the types of cost/benefit analysis that businesses do to ensure that the benefits of regulation outweighs its costs.

I plan to vigorously pursue these issues when the General Assembly reconvenes in February, and I am also spending the next few months talking with people in our community about what other critical issues need to be addressed.  Please call or e-mail me if you have other ideas for what needs to be done to improve the quality of life for our families.

Dan Debicella is the State Senator representing Stratford, Shelton, Monroe, and Seymour.  If you have feedback for him or want to talk about the issues, he can be reached toll-free at (800) 842-1421 or by e-mail at dan.debicella@cga.ct.gov.