Did UConn really need to drop this $4 million? And, fairer redistricting

For the nearly $4 million it paid, the University of Connecticut’s Board of Trustees might have been expected to get some spectacularly original money-saving ideas from the famous consulting firm McKinsey & Co. But the consultant’s report, delivered last month, was little more than boilerplate.The report says UConn could save as much as $67 million and raise as much as $30 million over five years by, among other things, consolidating purchasing for equipment and services, intensifying fundraising efforts, offering more classes during the summer, eliminating unpopular courses, raising basketball and football ticket prices, reducing varsity sports salaries and scholarships, raising fees for luxury dormitory rooms, offering more courses on the Internet and reducing faculty positions through attrition.Could UConn’s own budget office not have pointed out most of these options, and the trustees themselves not surmised the rest? Was that $4 million spent on an outsider largely for political purposes, to lend authority to the recommendations when the university runs into resistance trying to implement any of them? Was the consultant engaged in part to distract from the recent scandal of outlandish administrative expenses at UConn?Just by changing the title page the consultant might be able to sell its UConn report to other public universities with similarly timid boards. Nice work if you can get it.Connecticut’s General Assembly districts have just gone through their 10-year redrawing by the state Reapportionment Commission, an agency consisting of equal numbers of legislative leaders from the two major political parties. The parties either reach a compromise that doesn’t take partisan advantage or the redistricting power is transferred to the state Supreme Court, whose political impartiality is assumed, at least for redistricting purposes. This system, in force for 20 years and written into the state Constitution, has not served the state badly. Redistricting has not been used for a political power grab, as happens in some other states. Community of interest and geographical compactness in districts remain major objectives, as they should be. But what should be another major objective, political competitiveness, is not one. Instead this system most aims to protect incumbents, to avoid changing their districts enough as to threaten their re-election. This can be done only at the expense of political competitiveness, and as political competition declines, so does public participation in elections.That’s why, if a wave of public-spiritedness and reform ever sweeps Connecticut, legislative redistricting probably should be assigned to the Supreme Court from the start. Not that the justices would want this particular power, as it might have consequences for some of them when they come up for reappointment by the General Assembly at the end of their seven-year terms. Over the years legislators have complacently accepted almost infinite nonsense from the Supreme Court — from decisions in Sheff vs. O’Neill in 1996 (every public school must be racially balanced, but 15 years later few are), to Horton vs. Meskill in 1977 (public school systems must be financed equally, whatever that means, but 34 years later they’re still not) and Adams vs. Rubinow in 1968 (the state Constitution forbids the legislature from making rules for the courts unless the courts like them). But if, at court order, the public interest in competitive politics was ever put ahead of protecting incumbents in legislative redistricting, a few sleeping dogs might wake up at last.Is there really, as recent news reports suggest, some scandal in the admission by Connecticut Light & Power Co. that it had not paid within 30 days 9 percent of the invoices it received for work done repairing the damage done to power lines by Tropical Storm Irene in late August?CL&P says it sometimes needs more than 30 days to confirm that work being billed for was actually done. Given the extent of the storm damage and the much larger number of invoices arriving at the same time, this may not be so unreasonable.In any case, a few days after that storm the Connecticut Business and Industry Association reported that 44 percent of companies in Connecticut are unprofitable or just breaking even. With the state’s economy still sinking and state government having just imposed a record tax increase, many Connecticut businesses might only wish to be able to pay 91 percent of their bills within 30 days as the power company apparently does. Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.