Opening Day

Opening Day for America’s favorite pastime is here. The rules of the game are basic and understood by everyone. The old adage ‘three strikes and you’re out’ is universally recognized. During the season, your team will win some, lose some, and in a great year, your team gets to play in October. The common goal, regardless of your team, is to achieve victory.

Rules don’t change mid-game or mid-season. Fair play is expected, otherwise all credibility is lost.

Perhaps Connecticut should take a few hints from baseball and start providing an equal playing field for all of its citizens. Successful families, businesses, and communities require financial stability, consistency, and fairness. The current efforts to drastically change our rules include:

• regionalization of our local schools
• imposing costly mandates on businesses that are still struggling
• providing additional surcharges on electric rates and utilities
• raising and imposing statewide taxes on the middle-class

These examples are just the type of mid-season rule changes that will harm our state.

If these rule changes are approved and you have a budding MLB star at home that wants to refine her skills, little league will be more expensive because of the new tax on recreational sports instructions. If you pull a muscle helping your son warm up for practice, there will be new taxes assessed to your non-prescription medication and the sugary beverage you may drink with it. You may have to pay a toll to get to the away game. And, if it’s still chilly after an early season game and you want to turn up the heat when you get home, there will be new taxes you have to pay on your home heating bill.

Victory in public service is pretty easy to define: a safe and affordable state where families and businesses grow in a healthy environment. Perhaps if we stopped changing the rules mid-season, we could focus on making Connecticut a more affordable and attractive place to live and retire. It’s time to put the team allegiances aside and focus on the people of Connecticut, all of them.

Christie M. Carpino

Rep. Carpino is a Boston Red Sox fan, born to a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and counts both Mets and Yankee fans among her friends. She represents the towns of Cromwell and Portland, regardless of who they root for.