Left on my desk one morning this week was a large envelope containing a copy of a campaign flyer for Timothy Bowles, the Democrat running for Sen. Andrew Maynard’s soon-to-be-vacant seat for the 18th District.

Circled on the flyer was a pledge by the candidate for “Practicing Fiscal Responsibility.” A scrawled arrow was added, leading to a handwritten question mark.

The question mark was apparently meant as a segue to the balance of material in the envelope, copies of proceedings from a 2015 lawsuit in which Bank of America went to court to recover from Bowles an unpaid credit card balance from 2012 of $38,212.

The lawsuit ended with a court order last August requiring Bowles to make weekly payments of $35 to lawyers for the Bank of America.

As the anonymous envelope stuffer suggested, it’s not very credible for someone who let a credit card balance fester for years, until the bank had to file a lawsuit, to claim the high moral ground of “Practicing Fiscal Responsibility.”

Indeed, his personal fiscal irresponsibility casts a shadow over his suitability to take on the burdens, as a state senator, of the state’s crushing financial crisis.

I am more troubled, though, about the candidate’s $62,000 state pension, which he earned during his long career as a state social worker.

Taming ballooning pension obligations are a critical component in solving the state’s budget crisis, and I don’t think someone who benefits from the existing pension system has much standing to become a credible reformer.

I don’t begrudge Bowles, or any other state pension holder, the pensions they legitimately earned, playing by the rules then in place.

But the generous system is bankrupting the state and must change.

Not only does Bowles have a stake in the status quo, because of his pension, he is a former vice president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO.

He described himself, in a previous campaign for the Senate, as a “long-time labor activist.”

I know there is considerable political disagreement about this, but it seems to me that lawmakers in Hartford should at least be union-neutral in the epic budget battle that awaits us all after the next election.

The choices are grim: raise taxes or cut services or payroll and pension costs. It seems to me the ultimate arbiters, state lawmakers, ought to be as conflict-free as possible, and that means not necessarily siding with the powerful unions.

Bowles’ pension should at least make it possible for him to keep up with the $35 weekly payments ordered by the court.

I put a call in to him to ask about the lawsuit by Bank of America. He didn’t have a lot to say about the unpaid credit card bill, but he said he is in the process of resolving it and hopes to pay it off within another year.

He said the lawsuit followed a misunderstanding because “it wound up with a collection agency which did not communicate with me.”

Bowles, who lives in Preston, served one term in the state House of Representatives and apparently earned a lot of political goodwill around here at that time.

I can’t say how often people suggest that he’s a nice guy when his name comes up in regards to this fall’s election.

I wonder, though, whether the people of Connecticut need to send nice guys to Hartford these days, when the General Assembly is being guarded by union chieftains, chewing on razor blades.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com