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She Wants YOU To Stay In Connecticut

by Michelle Turner | Mar 2, 2010 11:37 am

(9) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Politics, State

Michelle Turner Photo Mary Glassman had a double pitch for college students in a visit to New Haven: Elect me governor. And stick around after graduation.

She suggested she could help lure them to stay in part through a new “research corridor” connecting Yale and UConn, and through better mass transportation.

Glassman, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, Monday night was the latest statewide candidate to address the Yale College Democrats at the university’s Branford College. As a candidate who’s using public financing rather than pouring millions of her own dollars into the race, she said, she’s trying to wrest the nomination from the “rich guys from Greenwich and Stamford”.

Seventeen students showed up.

“How many of you are seniors?” Glassman, who’s currently first selectwoman of Simsbury, asked them.

One student raised a hand.

“OK, when you graduate, how many of you are considering staying in Connecticut?”

Two raised their hands.

“Here’s the challenge that we face in Connecticut. We lose more young people from this state to other states more than anywhere else in the country. That’s a real, I think, warning bell for our state, because our state is facing huge challenges fiscally. And the only way out of it is by keeping young people in our state to find jobs, build homes and raise their families.”

Born and raised in what she described as “a blue collar town” and a poor community north of Hartford, Glassman said she was the only girl in the family, and the first to go to college. After she graduated from University of Connecticut, she returned to New Britain to work as a reporter, part of a team that exposed municipal corruption, she said.

Wanting to better understand the language of government, she returned to study law, she said. ” It was $500 per semester,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford it otherwise.

She tied that experience into her campaign pitch, which she delivered with her daughter Amanda (pictured to the left of her in the above photo) sitting alongside the other students. She laid out a plan to keep young people in Connecticut.

Education and opportunity enabled her to go to UConn and remain in the state, she said. Her first priority is to give kids a quality education, starting with pre-kindergarten, she said.

She argued quality education leads to job growth: “The other guys talk about jobs, jobs, jobs. But you can’t get a good job if you don’t have a good education.”

As soon as young people graduate high school or college, they leave the state for good, she said. While jobs must be created to hold young people in the state, Connecticut needs to have more affordable housing, too, she argued. “Connecticut lacks affordable housing for the handicapped, their families, the elderly. Young people take jobs, but can’t find affordable housing. So there is a real disconnect.”

There’s no state agency which oversees housing. It was eliminated, Glassman said, by the previous administration.

She said transportation is another key to keeping people here. “We are strategically located between New York and Boston, and yet, you can’t get there [New York or Boston]. You can’t take a train, you can’t take a bus.”

As an assistant to the the speaker of the State House of Representatives back in 2001-2002, Glassman recalled, worked on a transportation strategy bill, which included high-speed rail. She said a gas tax would have paid for developing the faster trains.

“And it would make Connecticut a cool place to live,” she said. Slight laughter filled the room. “You’d think it would be cool.”

The other way Glassman said the state could retain young people is to set up a “research corridor” with UConn and Yale serving as the base. North Carolina’s research triangle could serve as the model. The governor needs to sit down with presidents of both universities to make it happen, she said.

“This is all can be done with a stroke of the governor’s pen,” she argued.

The administration of current Gov. M. Jodi Rell (who’s not running for reelection) proposed a UCOnn-yale nanotechnology center a few years ago, but then never funded it. Read about that here.

Glassman also told the students that public financing is allowing her to run. The state’s system allows candidates to receive public matching dollars if they limit the size and types of contributions they take in. Some of the leading gubernatorial candidates, like Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Tom Foley, are opting out of the system.

To qualify for the matching dollars, Glassman said, she has to get 2,500 people to donate $100 each. With that money, she said, she would be"beholden to no one.” She said as of seven weeks ago, her campaign was halfway to the goal.

She said she wasn’t concerned about her Democratic rivals who have overflowing campaign coffers.

“Look at Scott Brown in Massachusetts,” she said. “He didn’t have a lot of money.When you have a candidate who can run with a vision, its not about money.”

“People are desperate for leadership with a vision,” she said, “and shopping for candidates.”

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posted by: anon on March 2, 2010  12:00pm

The contention that young people leave Connecticut, and leave it “for good,” in rates greater than other areas is misleading. 

First of all, the difference in the % leaving is not very much different from many other states, which makes it problematic to generalize that all young workers are leaving at higher rates than those of other states.

Second, many young workers leave the state, but often stay within 50-100 miles of their home (NY and MA in particular).  Other states are larger than Connecticut and have more cities, and housing or job choices, within their geographic limits.  They may have just as many (if not more) college graduates moving 100+ miles from their homes, it just doesn’t register as a different state.  A better comparison would be to look at the number of young workers who stay within the metropolitan area (CMSA), given that much of Connecticut is technically part of the NY City CMSA.  As it is now, someone moving from Greenwich to NYC counts as a loss to the state, whereas someone moving from Chappaqua to NYC doesn’t, even though Armonk is farther away.

Third, a large number of young workers move back in their 30s and 40s.  Areas with higher proportions of suburbs (and more expensive housing) tend to lose 25-34 year old workers but gain 35-55 year old workers - it is just a national pattern and again, Connecticut is not exceptional when compared to any other area of similar housing, demographics and size.

Fourth, much of Connecticut is significantly wealthier than other states, and therefore there tend to be more graduates and more young people with the opportunity to move - high education level is correlated with mobility. 

In summary, we need to compare apples to apples. Comparing Connecticut to massive states the size of the entire Northeast, like California and Texas, isn’t a valid study.

posted by: Richie Riches on March 2, 2010  12:45pm

Why is Mary going on about the, “rich guys from Greenwich and Stamford”?  She and her husband are millionaires too.

posted by: lance on March 2, 2010  1:25pm

She said you can’t get to NY or Boston by train or bus?

What would be the response by the Independent have been if someone like, say, Linda McMahon, said this?  Because you know it’s not true, right?

posted by: City Hall Watch on March 2, 2010  2:04pm

The problems with CT are taxes, housing and jobs. Young people are graduating from college with extraordinary education debt and jobs that pay less than $100K. Once the state and feds take their pound of flesh, and they absorb the extraordinary cost of living here because of all the other hidden taxes, they face high housing costs to either buy or rent. If they can make more money and have a better standard of living elsewhere, why would young people stay here? More importantly, job growth and opportunity has been anemic in this state for at least 20 years. It took us a decade to get back the jobs we lost during the last recession. Now, we’ve lost another 100K jobs and counting. Nobody is predicting when they might come back. I won’t be surprised if when the census dust settles, there are fewer people living here than were here a decade ago.

posted by: The Count on March 2, 2010  3:42pm

Why is it candidates for office always see Southern Connecticut transportation in terms of rail and the state as a whole in terms of Bradley International Airport? Ms. Glassman, Southern Connecticut is more than access to/from Boston/New York. Get behind making Tweed-New Haven Airport the airport it SHOULD be!

posted by: bob from branford on March 3, 2010  1:57pm

as one that worked with Mary Glassman throughout the past decade plus, and as a Republican, I can attest to her abilities.  She has demonstrated time and again her willingness to listen to all sides and make informed decisions as a result of same.  This is one of the things our next Governor will have to bring to the office immediately.

I wish her luck and hope for the best for her and for the state.

posted by: Tony on March 4, 2010  7:03am

As a former lifelong CT and now NC resident who has 2 UCONN degrees and one from Cornell, I have to comment on this.

Mrs. Glassman clearly has misdiagnosed the problem. First of all, CT has spent 30 years driving away business. Remember SAAB and UPS leaving? Remember Pfizer pulling out of the UCONN vaccine research center and UCONN being too slow and stupid to find an alternate site beside Horsebarn Hill? Remember our convicted felon former gov who ran on getting rid of the income tax and never did? RTP has spent decades developing business, CT spends decades repelling them.

She expects smart young graduates to stay. Intelligent people are going to carefully consider the benefits of a job and location as well as total costs. How does CT with high energy costs (especially during long, cold winters), sky high property taxes, high housing costs, one inconveniently located (for most of the state) airport, high sales tax, and an income tax that kicks in on people making federal poverty level wages expect to win when compared to business friendly,lower tax, warmer states?

In addition, the property tax is extremely unfair if you do not have kids since most of it goes for schools. Please explain to me how people without kids are burdening schools when they buy an expensive car or new house? It’s taxation without utilization and is extremely unfair. My property taxes down here are a small fraction of what they were up there on the same   rare, expensive car.

In a decade or 2 the only people left in CT will be the super rich in Fairfield county who can afford to stay no matter what and those too poor to flee. And the state will be taxing all of them to the hilt and still wondering why everybody leaves. What’s that old saying about those who don’t study history?

posted by: Brian Tang on March 4, 2010  8:15am

I would stay in New Haven after I graduate on 3 conditions:
1. If I felt comfortable sending my kids to New Haven Public Schools kindergarten through 12th grade.
2. If ECC’s 2010 bike plan http://www.elmcitycycling.org/2010bikeplan is fully implemented. This would be much more likely if this legislation gets passed: http://blog.tstc.org/2010/03/03/ct-legislation-would-promote-safer-streets/
3. If Southern Connecticut puts together and implements a regional high-capacity transit plan, preferably with a streetcar link between Union Station and Science Park and bus rapid transit on Boston Post Rd between here and the mall (via Legion Ave and N. Frontage), and along Dixwell Ave, Kimberly Ave, Whalley Ave, and Foxon Blvd to all of the inner-ring suburbs.

posted by: Joe H on March 6, 2010  5:23pm

“This <research corridor> is all can be done with a stroke of the governor’s pen”

Yea, what is she smoking?  It takes money.  She left that part out.

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