The Job of Comptroller is to Tell the Truth About the Numbers

In my career, I’ve spent a lot of time looking at risk.

Not the kind you can see in a headline, but the kind that builds quietly over time. The kind that shows up in the numbers long before it shows up in a crisis.

In reinsurance, that’s the job. You don’t get to wish away risk or explain it away. You measure it. You report it honestly. And you make sure decisions today don’t create problems that someone else has to clean up tomorrow.

That’s why I’m running for Connecticut Comptroller.

Because right now, if you look closely at the numbers in Connecticut, you can see a pattern.

On the surface, things look stable. But underneath, we are making a series of decisions that push costs into the future, limit flexibility, and make long-term obligations harder to manage.

Take healthcare.

The state employee and retiree healthcare plan is one of the largest financial responsibilities we have. It requires constant discipline and clear-eyed management. Instead, we are seeing rising costs and missed opportunities to get ahead of them.

Premiums are going up: double digits for employees and retirees. Negotiations that were expected to deliver meaningful savings on hospital rates have not materialized in the way they were intended. And the bandwidth of those negotiations has been consumed by other priorities rather than focused on driving down long-term costs.

At the same time, the Partnership Plan, which extends state coverage to municipalities, nonprofits, and small businesses, is under real strain. It ran a $22.5 million deficit last year, with costs exceeding revenue in multiple years. That is not a one-time issue. It is a trend.

When you see a pattern like that, you don’t expand it without a clear path to stability. You stop and ask what the numbers are telling you.

The same pattern shows up in how we are handling long-term obligations.

Connecticut’s retiree healthcare program is significantly underfunded. The trust set aside to pay for those benefits is funded at roughly 18 percent of total liabilities.

And yet, instead of strengthening that position, we are using the trust to cover current expenses.

As reported, the state is planning to underfund contractually required retiree healthcare benefits by roughly $230 million over the next two fiscal years, with any remaining gap expected to be filled by drawing from the retiree healthcare trust. That means the cost, plus interest, is shifted to future taxpayers.

At the same time, contributions into that trust have declined as employee contributions phase out and the state reduces its share.

In any financial context, that is a warning sign. You are drawing down a fund that is already under-resourced, while contributing less into it.

That is not risk management. That is deferral.

We are also starting to see a shift in how the state approaches its fiscal guardrails, the very policies that helped restore stability over the past several years.

Those guardrails were designed to limit spending volatile tax revenue and ensure that unexpected revenue is used to strengthen the state’s long-term position, not expand short-term commitments.

Now, there are active discussions about changing how those guardrails function.

There have been calls to revisit how the volatility cap is calculated, with the stated goal of making more revenue available to spend. As it has been put publicly by our current Comptroller, “there are ways that we can look at the volatility cap… we can’t just look at the volatility cap in a vacuum.”

That is a meaningful shift.

Just a few years ago, the same office emphasized that these fiscal guardrails had allowed Connecticut to weather economic volatility and urged policymakers to reinforce them, not revisit or loosen them.

This is not about one policy debate. It is about a pattern.

A willingness to rely on short-term solutions. A willingness to revisit the rules that impose discipline. A willingness to move costs forward rather than confront them directly.

Individually, each decision can be explained. Together, they tell a different story.

The role of Comptroller is to make sure that story is clear.

Not to shape policy around it, but to report it honestly. To show where programs are underperforming. To make clear when costs are rising faster than expected. And to be transparent about what today’s decisions mean five, ten, or twenty years from now.

That requires a specific mindset.

In reinsurance, you don’t evaluate risk based on one year. You look at patterns over time. You stress test assumptions. You ask what happens if current trends continue, not just whether the numbers balance today.

In Westport, I brought that same approach to municipal finances, including addressing long-term retiree benefit obligations that had been building for years. Not by ignoring them, but by putting a plan in place to ensure they were properly funded.

That is what this role requires at the state level.

Connecticut does not need more noise around its finances. It needs clarity and discipline.

It needs a Comptroller who will report the numbers as they are, identify risks early, and ensure that short-term decisions are made with a clear understanding of their long-term consequences.

Because the numbers always tell the truth.

The question is whether we are willing to listen.

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Jen Tooker is the Republican Candidate for Comptroller. She previously served as the First Selectwoman of Westport and as a reinsurance executive for over 25 years.