GE didn’t act just out of pique. It looked deeper and further than June’s tax hike. Connecticut is facing huge budget deficits of $355 million in 2017, $1.7 billion in 2018 and $1.9 billion in 2019, according to the state’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis. A cumulative deficit of almost $4 billion in an annual budget of about $20 billion is an abyss. Future tax increases are inevitable. Nor are these projections dynamic. That is to say, they do not factor in the likely reaction of taxpayers, both businesses and individuals, to the coming succession of tax increases that the state will be forced to levy. Famously, Connecticut is the new Dodge City, the place that a 2014 Gallup Poll discovered half the citizenry wanted to get out of.
Even Dan "The Gun Gov" Malloy is desperately looking to leave his state for a post in the Obama/Clinton administration. So far, a chair near the First Lady during SOTU is all they're willing to give him, though.
Where I'm really noticing it now is in the absence of retired colleagues. Connecticut used to be filled with retired clergy. Even in the smallest parish I could expect to have four potential "substitutes" for those Sundays when I was on vacation. Nowadays, I can't find even one. Then there is the obvious effect this is having on state population, which will always be reflected in congregational size and budgets.