If only state government set real deadlines for itself, as for CL & P

Now that the managers at Connecticut Light & Power, especially its former President Jeffrey D. Butler who resigned last week, have been declared incompetent for needing 10 days instead of seven to restore electricity after the worst weather damage to the company’s transmission system in half a century, maybe the state can learn something from the deadlines the company tried to impose on itself under the pressure of state and municipal government. After all, if it’s fair for state and municipal governments to impose deadlines on the electric company amid a disaster, how about imposing some deadlines on government itself in merely normal circumstances? For example, how long have state government and local boards of education been trying to improve public school student performance on standardized tests — 20 or 30 years? Overlooked amid Storm Alfred’s power outage was the announcement from the National Assessment of Educational Progress that fewer than half of Connecticut’s fourth- and eighth-graders are proficient in math and reading and that the state’s performance has not improved for eight years. Does anyone remember the state Supreme Court’s decision in 1996 in the case of Sheff vs. O’Neill, which held that each student in Connecticut’s public schools has a constitutional right to a racially integrated education? Fifteen years later there is only marginally more integration in those schools, and indeed the Sheff plaintiffs have settled the case for a promise of marginally more integration in Hartford’s schools alone. The supposed constitutional right proclaimed 15 years ago is being neither enforced nor reconsidered. Almost 20 years before its decision in the Sheff case was the state Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Horton vs. Meskill, which ordered state government to equalize opportunity among school systems. Thirty-four years later, state government hasn’t even defined equal opportunity, and though it often rewrites the formula for state financial aid to school systems, they vary so widely in resources and quality that public policy has switched from improving school systems to creating “magnet” schools as mechanisms of escape. In 1991, as 25 years of government’s subsidizing of childbearing outside marriage began to overwhelm child welfare agencies, the state Department of Children and Youth Services, now the Department of Children and “Families,” cooperated with the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union to get itself put under federal court order to improve. Despite a much-increased budget since then, 20 years later the department remains under federal court order, having neither improved enough nor reconsidered its premises. Construction of the Route 11 expressway from Colchester to New London began 45 years ago, but money to complete it was never appropriated. A 6-mile gap remains between Salem and New London despite the supposed urgent desire of both the state and federal governments for “shovel-ready” public works projects to stimulate the economy.In 1985 a Torrington woman, Tracey Thurman, was stabbed nearly to death by her abusive husband, sued the police department, and won $2.3 million for its failure to protect her. But 26 years later Connecticut continues to offer domestic violence victims only court protective orders instead of prompt prosecution of their assailants. Most women murdered in Connecticut die clutching such orders. The decline of Connecticut’s cities as measured in population, wealth, jobs and violent crime — particularly the decline of Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury — has been noted since the 1960s. For 50 years the state’s elected officials have been pledging to reverse that decline, yet it has only accelerated. The state’s general economic decline, its failure to generate any increase in private-sector jobs in 20 years, has been much remarked upon since last year’s campaign for governor, but the state’s economy continues to weaken and companies locate in Connecticut only through the grossest bribery by state government. Now that state and municipal officials have mastered the art of setting deadlines and expressing indignation about failure in the power line repair business, Connecticut might benefit greatly if they applied such mastery to their regular work. While the state has many big problems, they are all also very old problems on which government has purported to be working for a long time without result. So, governor, state legislators, commissioners and mayors, how about setting some deadlines for yourselves here? No need to rush as much as the bungling idiots at the power company did getting the lights back on. Go ahead — take until the end of next month. Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.