How To Increase State Revenue

As you know, I take great pride in Connecticut and I am glad that you took the time to read our literature.

As you know there is only so much space on each flyer, which is why I am happy to clarify the points with you today. Let us start with your first question.

Public schools and towns haven’t been receiving their fair share of state revenue. In order to correct for this, you are right, those three options are ways of increasing funding. However, they are not the only way.

When elected I will work across the aisle to retain businesses and families to increase the quantity and quality of revenue coming to the state. This will be achieved by increasing state credits to recent Connecticut graduate residences to keep retention of highly educated talent. This combined with out of state graduates, will increase our tax base without raising taxes or cutting programs. With my extensive experience in education I can tell you that any investment in schools pays dividends. If Connecticut can increase our quality of student it will increase our tax base and creates a positive externality in other constituent issues.

Another way to raise revenue besides increasing our permanent residency, would be to make Connecticut an up and coming travel destination.

Connecticut is fortunate to have serious travel potential for all seasons Something few states have. Connecticut has over 300 miles of beautiful coast line that has many different potentials as a tourist destination. Biking paths could be augmented to attract those who visit. In the winter Connecticut offers many winter ski resorts and we could capitalize on. If we become a state that is known for its variety, we would then be able to raise more funds consistently, while making the livelihood of Connecticut residents

better.
Finally, we will cut funding from redundant programs. This is a little different from simply pulling funds from constituent desired programs. For instance, if a Connecticut program is already covered at the federal, local, or another State program it wouldn’t make sense to continue to waste state resources. The same can be said for programs that fail at their attempted goal. It doesn’t make sense to have an opportunity cost that can be easily remedied by restoring funding to schools and the local level.

The reason I chose to address job and business retention second is because my first point is very correlated with innovation. If we can improve educational talent at all levels of public education, businesses seeking smart talent will stay in Connecticut. Smart businesses will drive innovation and job growth in the State creating the demand for more talent, even pulling from other states. As you know smart labor costs more meaning jobs in Connecticut will pay more. Additionally, if we have many towns attempting novel ways to increase the quality of businesses in Connecticut we are better off. By increasing funding to towns we can create flexibility for towns to achieve these goals. By allowing for favorable conditions for job growth we can rise out of the GDP per capita rut since you are right they are correlated.

It was a pleasure to talk to you and I hope I answered you questions to the fullest highlighting my transparency. When elected, I hope to improve my constituency relations with voters like yourself. I encourage voters to get a full view of this race before November and the best way to do that is to talk to both candidates.