Governor Ned Lamont's welcoming address to the new session of the General Assembly last week celebrated a state he sees improving in all respects. But even those who acknowledge that the governor is a decent guy may have begun noticing how much his remarks contrasted with recent news reports and the clamor at the state Capitol by dozens of groups for more money for human needs they say are worsening.

Indeed, recent news and that clamor suggest that Connecticut is being overwhelmed by, for example, neglected and mentally disturbed children, homeless people, drug addiction, poverty, underperforming students, failing and underfunded schools, badly stressed social-service organizations, racial and economic segregation, housing prices, urban deterioration and crime.

How can this be, especially when the federal government's economic data shows a strong national economy?

Maybe it's because to a great extent the official data is bogus. Many economists think so, noting how the official data is often contradicted by unofficial data and is revised downward when people have stopped looking. Bogus official data would explain why most voters give the Biden administration poor marks on the economy and think things were better under his awful predecessor.

Telling people to believe the government and not the evidence of their own lives is risky politically.

If, as people sense, the economy is really not so good, then the governor's budget proposal is even more courageous for maintaining some restraint on spending in accordance with state government's increasingly controversial "fiscal guardrails," which bring the state's pension funds closer to solvency.

Of course the people who clamor for more spending don't think pension fund solvency should be a priority. But then those people have never recognized that state government long ago became primarily a pension-and-benefit society for its own employees and municipal teachers, who constitute the army of the majority party at election time. Nor do the people who clamor for more spending ever notice that most additional spending fails to improve anything beyond the salaries of government employees, especially when it comes to education.

The people clamoring for more spending have never complained about government's results, about government's failure to get value for spending.

At least there's value in spending on Connecticut's government employees in one crucial respect. That is, as in ancient Rome, not paying the army well risks regime change.

Another racial mess

Maybe after a year of insubordination and chaos the state Public Defender Services Commission is moving toward normality.

Last week the commission suspended the chief public defender, TaShun Bowden-Lewis, putting her on paid leave and commencing another inquiry into the turmoil she has caused at the agency ever since her appointment two years ago, when she was hailed as its first Black chief.

Whereupon she began accusing of racism nearly everyone who disagreed with her, disregarding the commission's instructions, changing policies without the commission's approval and antagonizing many subordinates. This should have been corrected quickly, but the commission lacked the nerve to remove its first Black chief. So instead of firing Bowden-Lewis, four of the five commissioners, including two Superior Court judges, resigned, allowing her to keep running amok.

Last week she was accused of breaking into the e-mail accounts of two senior lawyers who displeased her.

If the replacement commissioners, appointed by Governor Lamont, the chief justice and legislative leaders, have figured out that Bowden-Lewis is no more fit for authority than Donald Trump is, they will fire her despite the fear that doing their duty will prompt a few years of litigation full of racial invective, ending in a settlement payment to Bowden-Lewis of a couple hundred thousand dollars.

That's how the governor's 2020 dismissal of his health commissioner — also a Black woman — ended last year.

The imbroglio with Bowden-Lewis validates the observation by the late, great political columnist Charles Krauthammer: Racism will be vanquished not when people can be hired despite their race but when they can be fired despite their race. Government in Connecticut isn't there yet.

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He can be reached at CPowell@cox.net.