Not only is Connecticut scoring F's on so many fronts, unable to get its financial house in order, bleeding residents and companies, but lawmakers in neighboring states are making the honor roll year after year.

The latest example is marijuana. Legal recreational pot is on its way in Massachusetts.

It's also on the radar in Rhode Island this legislative season, and Gov. Gina M. Raimondo says she is prepared to sign the right bill if it comes to her desk.

In Hartford, the big talk is about refining the state's medical marijuana law. Yawn.

And so soon, maybe even before Connecticut gamblers start to cross the border to spend their Connecticut-earned money in Massachusetts, marijuana buyers from Connecticut will be crossing the border to buy pot, in either Massachusetts or Rhode Island or probably both.

I see a pot store coming soon in Westerly, just over the Pawcatuck River, and I bet a good 25 percent of the customers will be from Connecticut, maybe more.

There will be a lot of tax money that Massachusetts will be collecting from Connecticut residents, at the slots in a Springfield casino and in marijuana stores all along the state borders, money that should have stayed home.

Connecticut lawmakers seem deaf to the calls to catch up.

And why?

It's not like Connecticut has ever shied away from sin taxes. There is no mercy for residents addicted to nicotine, who are bled for taxes. And just recently Gov. Dannel Malloy agreed to put keno screens in family restaurants around the state, to fill a very small budget hole.

Indeed, Malloy scored one of his biggest policy objectives by making it possible for liquor stores to open on Sunday.

I think some of it is the clumsy factor, a political establishment that has been run for too long by lobbyists, public sector unions and lawyers.

Look at all the other things that Gov. Raimondo has accomplished in Rhode Island, New England's new shining state on the hill.

Two years ago she addressed her state's pension crisis, probably the worst in the country, and got national accolades for it.

Here in Connecticut, the Democratic chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Cathy Osten of Sprague, will berate you for talking about pension reform. She refused to even broach the topic last time I had a conversation with her, saying that's the governor's domain.

Gov. Raimondo in Rhode Island also has set in motion a plan to install electronic tolls to tax trucks, heavy users of highway infrastructure and is proposing a plan for tuition-free college.

A Democrat, she is running circles around our circus act in Hartford.

Maybe she will be our first woman president.

Of course our governor can't begin to address some of these pressing issues because he is busy trying to stop another huge corporate migration from the state, this time a cornerstone of one of the industries that once made the Connecticut economy sing.

Get ready for more billionaires from Fairfield County to flee Connecticut, as the public sector unions raise their cries for higher income taxes on the rich, pushing rates beyond comparable suburban retreats in New York and New Jersey.

Billionaires carry a lot of the budget load. And they can live anywhere.

The failures here would not be so discouraging if our neighbors were not doing so well.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com