Pocket Change

I was going through my trouser pockets the other day as my wife organized the washing. For too many years someone kept leaving all manner of things in their pants' pockets. I won't use any names, of course, but if I did it would rhyme with 'chill', which she rarely did after discovering them, which was after the clothes had been in the washer and had stained other items of apparel.  

So now one of us has pocket-check duty on laundry day. Recently I found a twenty-dollar bill in the front pocket of a pair of jeans that I couldn't even tell you the last time I wore. Twenty dollars! Pre-pandemic and supply-chain difficulties, that was a modest chunk of change. Now, of course, not so much. 

Still, I was very pleased with myself to have found it until, as I folded it to put it in my wallet, I realized I hadn't found it but, rather, had not realized previously I had lost it. You’re probably not surprised when I tell you that I redoubled my efforts in checking all my pants’ pockets. Wouldn’t you?   

I was thinking about those pants and what I originally regarded as my good fortune when I came across a news story from CT News Junkie, a free subscription service I find helpful in rounding out my understanding of events across The Nutmeg State. The story's headline is "Nearly $200 M in New Projected Revenue to Spend". And the first thing I learned is that the M doesn't stand for marbles. 

The next thing I learned is that not enough of our state legislators spend time going through their own pockets since the tone of the article, accurately summed up in the headline, is 'gee, now we have more money to spend.' Except...

As my financial epiphany demonstrates, it's not found money at all. The 'new projected revenue' was in someone else's pocket before the Department of Revenue Services came calling to collect it. 

This is something that happens, not just here in Connecticut, but everywhere. 

We take six inches off the front of the blanket, sew it onto the bottom of the blanket and tell one another it's a foot longer. But it’s not, no matter how many times we claim otherwise. 

Since a well-known substance rolls downhill, it's usually (in order) the municipalities and then the residents of those municipalities who discover as local budgets are developed and finalized that the so-called rising tide didn't manage to lift quite all the boats. Again.

Here in Norwich, our Board of Education is looking at an over $2M deficit to close out the year. Again, the M ain't for marbles but the number is precipitated by unfunded state mandates. I'm sure we're not the only municipality whose school system is looking at a sea of red ink.  

I don't pretend to be a legislator, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night (with Clarence Thomas) and it seems to me, the state might better put however many M's there are, into paying for things we already have and are using rather than financing more and other initiatives. 

We need to remember there will always be more hands reaching into our pockets than the number of pockets and the money, no matter what pocket it came out of, is still ours.
-bill kenny