Jen Tooker has a question for potential voters: “Does anybody in this room know somebody who’s moved to Connecticut recently — not almost 20 years ago, but recently for a promotion or a career opportunity?” Tooker has asked that question as she travels to towns around the state in a ques t to become Connecticut’s next comptroller. “Nine-point-nine times out of 10,” Tooker said, “the room is pretty quiet.” Nobody can think of someone. That’s why people sould elect her the next comptroller, she argued: She has the background and fiscally conservative chops to analzye the books and give the state the smart straight factual analysis it needs to dig out of massive debt and lure new job-creating businesses here. Tooker, who’s 56, is the Republican comptroller candidate on the Nov. 3 general election ballot. The job has two main roles: The “chief financial officer” who cuts the checks that keep government running and retiree pensions and health benefits paid. And a truth-teller who issues independent reports on the state of Connecticut government’s finances. Tooker faces first-term incumbent Democrat Sean Scanlon for the position. She discussed her campaign Thursday during an appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. “I am the pro-business comptroller candidate,” she said, focused on more quickly reducing Connecticut’s highest-per-capita-in-the-nation $80 billion long-term liabilities. Around three-quarters of that total comes from accumulated state employee pension debt (due to generations of both Democratic and Republican underfunding) as well as shortfalls in the retiree health trust fund, currently only 18 percent funded. Tooker argued that her private and public sector backgrounds prepare her to tackle those challenges. She spent 25 years rising to executive positions in the reinsurance industry, assessing risks and costs for the Gen Re corporation. Over 14 years in elected office in Westport — most recentlly as first selectwoman — she worked on fully funding the town’s retiree health benefit program and limiting long-term liabilities. As comptroller, Tooker said, she would deliver a message that the the state still has a long way to go in tackling its pension and retiree health liabilities. She credited the state’s progress in recent years in paying down the pension fund debt by $10 billion — but argued that a separate labor contract increased wages enough to offset those gains. Moving forward, she argued, the state should pay down the debt more than it has, including using general operating funds. That would mean cutting other parts of government. Asked what she would cut, she argued that the role of the comptroller is to offer that general prescription, while legislators would have the role of deciding what to cut. “The comptroller is not a policy person,” she said. “So that becomes an issue with the legislature and the governor, where they would find the money out of the budget to actually start to pay down some of these liabilities. But my recommendation would be that they do” that. She also argued against altering the formula for the “volatility cap” reached in the 2017 bipartisan “fiscal guardrails” budget agreement to free up funds, either to pay down debt or, as the legislature did this year, to help municipalities plug short-term budget caps (including from programs created by now-gone Covid-relief funds). Under the guardrail compromise, lawmakers were limited to $3.78 billion a year in how much they can spend from those revenues. The rest of the money must go toward paying down pension debt or shoring up the “rainy day fund” for emergency situations like recessions (a fund that has since been filled to the maximum). Tooker cited the guardrails as one way she differentiates herself with Scanlon. Progressive Democrats have argued that the formula for how much surplus money legislators can tap in a year was arbitrarily set, that the evidence of recent years would support allowing more money to be tapped for addressing pressing human needs. Fiscal conservatives like Tooker have argued that the point of keeping the fomula intact is to protect the state from the effects of wild market fluctuations that helped create the fiscal hole we’re in. Scanlon took a middle approach, agreeing with some tinkering while seeking to preserve the basic formula. In distinguishing herself from Scanlon, Tooker also cited the performance of the comptroller-run “partnership” plan that allows municipalities to buy into group health insurance. The fund has run a deficit four of the past nine years, and based on her background she could do better, she said. The candidate clarified that she was in no way criticizing Scanlon’s truthfulness or personal qualities, but rather making a case that she has a more conservative approach that would produce better results. Asked about Tooker’s comments, Scanlon told the Independent that he has “publicly urged that we use some of the guardrail-related savings” to add to the retiree health trust fund. He attributed Partnership Plan fiscal challenges to “the same price surges of hospitalization and drug costs that every health plan in the country are dealing with. Despite those national pressures, we’re still offering better health care at lower prices than most municipalities could get on the incredibly challenged private market. And that’s why, since I’ve been Comptroller, we’ve had a net increase of 42 groups joining the plan and why I constantly get calls from mayors and first selectmen asking how they can begin the process of joining the plan.” (Westport did not join the plan under Tooker, who said the town’s retiree health benefit program is more than 100 percent funded.) Click on the below video to watch the full conversation with GOP state comptroller candidate Jen Tooker on “Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of “Dateline New Haven.” The post Comptroller Candidate Runs As Fiscal Conservative appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less