The speaker of the house recently lambasted the governor’s plan to raise taxes, taking specific aim at her idea to raise the cigarette tax $0.49 to two bucks a pack.
Saying the proposal “nickeled and dimed the poor again,” James A. Amann (D-Milford) indicated that such an increase would unfairly target low- and moderate-income people, who buy more cigarettes.
No one disputes the speaker’s assertion that cigarette taxes disproportionately generate revenue from the poor. But if Amann’s comments are a valiant effort to protect the poor, one would expect to see progressive lobbyists high-fiving each other in every corner of the Legislative Office Building.
But they’re not.
That’s because groups that lobby on behalf of the poor aren’t opposing the cigarette tax increase. Their lobbyists aren’t pushing charts and talking points the speaker’s way. They’re not sending out legislative alerts to members. Many of them have not even taken a position on the issue.
“We haven’t really come out with a stance on it,” said Lucy Nolan. Nolan lobbies for End Hunger Connecticut!, where she is executive director, and is also chair of One Connecticut, a faction of more than 100 poverty-fighting organizations. She said the issue came up briefly at a recent meeting of lobbyists for the poor, but that it was bypassed for issues people felt strongly about.
One Connecticut sent a letter last week to Amann and other legislative leaders about key poverty-fighting issues, and barely mentioned the cigarette tax increase.
“People were sort of split on the cigarette tax,” Nolan said.
Wallet V. Wellness
There is good reason for that. While a higher cigarette tax would target poor people’s wallets, it would also probably improve their health –- and lower their health care costs –- by encouraging them not to smoke.
That’s the feeling at CT Voices for Children, which has hired former Dannel Malloy running mate Mary Glassman as a lobbyist, but also has not opposed the cigarette tax increase.
“That sort of deterrent to smoke is even more significant for kids,” said Douglas Hall, a CT Voices for Children researcher.
“We don’t want to see kids smoking cigarettes, obviously, so from that perspective it’s a good thing.”
Same idea at Legal Assistance Resource Center, in Hartford, where lobbyist Jane McNichol is the executive director.
“We still felt it was very hard to get away from the public health benefits,” McNichol said. That doesn’t mean she thinks it’s a good idea; Nolan, McNichol and Hall all decreed tobacco taxes as regressive and unreliable, but McNichol said her organization “would not be opposing it.”
So if lobbyists paid to represent the poor aren’t opposing the cigarette tax increase, why is the speaker doing so in their name?
Strangely, although the speaker’s comments aren’t supported by the do-gooder community, they are being echoed in chorus by free market groups and tobacco companies.
Americans for Prosperity, a Washington anti-tax group, released comments pointing out that tobacco taxes “are frequently borne by low-income Americans.”
A similar group, FreedomWorks, e-mailed around comments such as this: “When times get tough for hard-working families in Connecticut, they have to cut expenses and pinch pennies.
Why shouldn’t families expect the same from their government?”
Tobacco companies don’t love having their lobbyists in the newspaper (lest they end up like Nick Naylor, kidnapped and covered in nicotine patches), but R.J. Reynolds spokesman John Singleton, also offered nearly the same argument as Amann.
“It’s really a working man’s tax. It adversely affects low- and moderate-income individuals, in our view,” he said.
The similarity is striking. It leads one to wonder if the speaker is serving more as a mouthpiece for industry than as an advocate for the poor.
Jonathan O’Connell is a Hartford Business Journal Staff Writer.
