It wasn't supposed to work this way, he says.

When the state income tax was created in 1991, then-Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. promised that the new tax would smooth out the up-and-down cycles of the state's sales-tax-based budget, providing a steady stream of income for generations to come.

The cycle of boom and bust was supposed to end.

Now, as the father of the tax, Weicker says he is exasperated by the way Connecticut has dug itself into its massive fiscal hole.  The state is hundreds of millions in the red despite having huge surpluses when the economy and the stock market were booming in early 2000.

"If you're going to spend it, it's not going to smooth out anything," Weicker said in a telephone interview from his Virginia home.  "They just spent the money. It's as simple as that - the income tax, the gambling money. I just don't know how you do it. I just don't. I think it's just outrageous. I really do."  Even with an across-the-board income tax increase that Gov. John G. Rowland recently signed, the state still faces a deficit reaching as much as $800 million in the next fiscal year.

From his current perspective in Virginia, Weicker says there's nothing wrong with the framework that he and the 1991 legislature created - a 4.5 percent income tax, a 6 percent sales tax and a reduced corporate profits tax. He criticized any talk of raising the sales tax, and said the 20 percent surcharge on corporate profits signed by Rowland is a bad idea.

"No corporation would move into the state of Connecticut because of our high corporate taxes," said Weicker, who started reducing the tax before Rowland accelerated the rate reduction to 7.5 percent.  Despite his criticisms, Weicker wouldn't outline any solutions to Connecticut's problems or endorse any tax plan. He declined to say whether he opposes the "millionaires' tax," even though he repeatedly opposed it as governor when he said it was nothing more than "punishing success." In Weicker's day, a proposed 6 percent income tax on the wealthiest citizens was never known as the "millionaires' tax," but the concept was often floated under the name of "repairing" the income tax by making it more progressive.

Weicker, 71, an outspoken Republican who left his party to run as an independent in 1990, had criticism for everyone across the board - Republicans, Democrats, and Rowland alike. He said they all took part in spending unprecedented amounts of money in the booming 1990s. One of the biggest mistakes, Weicker said, was sending rebate checks to Connecticut taxpayers in both 1998 and 1999.

"It was very cozy [between Democrats and Republicans], but nobody looked down the road at all," said Weicker, now retired from a political career as a first selectman, U.S. House member, U.S. senator and governor.  Virtually the entire legislature voted for the rebates as the economy soared in the election year of 1998, and some say they would do it again.  Both Senate Republican leader Louis DeLuca of Woodbury and deputy leader William Aniskovich of Branford said they have no regrets, saying the rebates were taken from surplus money and amounted to short-term tax breaks that never became permanent cuts.

But Senate President Pro Tem Kevin B. Sullivan of West Hartford said, in hindsight, he wishes he never voted for the rebates.  "It was the dumbest policy thing we've ever done," Sullivan said.  Christopher Cooper, Rowland's spokesman, questioned Weicker's analysis. He said the administration's spending increased only 4 to 5 percent per year over the last eight years - about half the state's annual spending increase in the 1980s and early '90s. The state's spending cap prevents runaway spending, he added. "I don't think the numbers would bear out that Connecticut overspent," he said.

State Rep. Robert Farr, a West Hartford Republican who voted to create the income tax in 1991, said the legislature would never have set aside the rebate money and put it in the "rainy day fund" for fiscal emergencies.  "Had we not done the rebates, we would have increased spending," Farr said. "The only thing we did wrong is we didn't
recognize the [economic] problem would last as long as it did.  Every economist assured us the revenue recession would be over last fall. The historic drop in the stock market has just killed us."

Farr says that virtually every state in the nation is hurting, even oil-rich Alaska, as the money is not flowing as freely as in the boom days.  "Oil to them is what Fairfield County was to us," Farr said.

Since the legislature established a property-tax credit that eventually reached $500, more than 300,000 taxpayers have fallen off the charts completely and currently pay no income tax at all. Some have argued that the legislature knocked the legs out from under the income tax by taking taxpayers off the rolls and shifting the burden to the wealthy.  This took place while the incomes of wealthy people, who take about 40 percent of their income from capital gains in investments, dropped sharply as the stock market fell.

Weicker, though, downplayed the notion that the income tax has become destabilized.  "Their spending has destabilized the whole state," he said. "Let's not kid around on this.

"Why should a state's fiscal policy depend on the stock market?" Weicker asked. "Why should a state's fiscal policy depend on the stock market any more than Social Security should depend on the stock market?"  Besides creating the income tax while governor, Weicker also crafted deals with two Indian tribes that now pour an additional
$400 million per year directly into the state coffers. With two of the largest casinos in the world, Connecticut has a built-in advantage over other states that are struggling with their budgets.

"None of the states had the gambling money at their disposal," Weicker said.  Weicker also had harsh words for the state's settlement of the long-running Sheff vs. O'Neill school desegregation lawsuit.  "It's a lousy settlement," Weicker said. "Of course it doesn't go far enough. Racial isolation shouldn't exist. Period."  The settlement should not be deemed as successful in any way, he said, because 70 percent of all students in the Hartford public schools could remain in the same under-performing schools they
currently attend.