Now that even the cheerleading shills at the University of Connecticut’s Center for Economic Analysis acknowledge that government economic data has been just misleading spin and that the state’s economy is actually declining and has lousy long-term prospects, maybe state politics will get serious.

The shocking report from UConn, published this week, came amid signs that the grifters who long have controlled state government may be on the run, thanks to clamor raised by several large employers, the long-dormant Connecticut Business and Industry Association, and the equally sleepy Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

Without public hearings, a few weeks ago Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the leaders of the Democratic majority in the General Assembly devised big tax increases on business particularly and on taxpayers generally and rammed them through the legislature just hours before its adjournment, figuring that business would just roll over again.

Instead several major employers proclaimed their distress and warned they might leave the state. CBIA, whose objective long had been only to moderate government’s predations, fervently joined in.

And suddenly the governor reversed himself and persuaded the legislative leaders to join him in figuring out how to undo most of those business tax increases and to cut spending, though in doing so they made themselves and the whole budget process look ridiculous.

Meanwhile, with a new executive director, Joseph A. DeLong, CCM signaled that it will start going beyond asking state government to give municipalities more money for mere forwarding to their government employee unions. At the group’s annual meeting, DeLong declared, “We have to talk about these elephants in the room, because Connecticut is starving for leadership.”

The biggest elephant, DeLong indicated, is government’s subservience to its own employees. He characterized the attitude of Senate Majority Leader Robert Duff, D-Norwalk, this way: “Doesn’t matter what the cost is, doesn’t matter where the money’s going to come from. If you’re a special-interest labor group, you can count on me.”

Asked about DeLong’s criticism, Duff sniffed, “We should have a much more constructive relationship.”

However, Senate President Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, got angry. DeLong, Looney said, “has obliterated the positive working relationship CCM enjoyed with legislative leaders.”

Looney cited legislation just passed by the General Assembly in the name of municipal property tax relief. But such legislation has passed nearly every year for decades and has only increased municipal employee compensation while property taxes have risen anyway.

For property tax relief will be impossible as long as Connecticut maintains collective bargaining and binding arbitration for government employee union contracts, systems that remove employee compensation from the democratic process and give the unions first claim on municipal revenue. Repealing those systems also will be impossible while the unions control Connecticut’s Democratic Party.

But since those systems nullify democracy, they are indefensible, and if CCM has realized that property tax relief is a sham, just the Democrats’ political cover for paying off the unions, the organization should attack those systems in a way that stresses democracy. The best way might be to propose legislation allowing municipalities to elect their contract arbiters, rather than to have arbiters appointed by the two sides in negotiation, as they are chosen now.

With 70 percent or more of municipal spending going to unionized personnel and thus subject to collective bargaining and binding arbitration, it would be fun to hear the unions and their stooges in the legislature explain why the public should not control how most of its money is spent, explain why George III, not Thomas Jefferson, was right about taxation without representation.

A stampede of the elephants in the room would be sensational.