John Olsen is fired up.
The longtime AFL-CIO president was speaking after a one-hour meeting that he had arranged Friday between Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and a standing-room-only crowd of the state's top union leaders.
Olsen believes the state's millionaires, particularly in lower Fairfield County, are not paying their fair share as part of Malloy's "shared sacrifice'' campaign.
"They spend $20,000 over the weekend having a cocktail party!'' Olsen bellowed. "They spend $20,000 on a cocktail party without even batting an eye! Why can't they pay some taxes?''
The top income-tax rate in Connecticut for millionaires is 6.5 percent, and Malloy is seeking to raise that rate to a maximum of 6.7 percent. The reason, he says, is because he wants Connecticut to continue its competitive advantage over New York State and New Jersey because both of those states have higher income tax rates. New York's rate is currently projected to drop to 6.85 percent in less than nine months on January 1, 2012, and Malloy wants to make sure that Connecticut's rate is lower.
But liberal Democrats like state Sen. Edith Prague and Olsen think that the rate should be higher.
"I think this budget is not fair. I don't think it's sharing,'' Olsen said.
A former Greenwich resident and former chairman of the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee in the mid-1980s, Olsen said that Wall Street executives who live in neighboring Westchester County, N.Y. pay far more in overall taxes than their counterparts only a few miles away in lower Fairfield County.