8 events that hit Connecticut pocketbooks, prosperity in 2022

Two years after the COVID shutdown, Connecticut and the nation spent 2022 digging out, a mixed year between the bookends of legalized sports betting at the end of 2021 and recreational cannabis sales at the start of 2023. The home state performed on par with the nation overall, reelected a governor committed to a centrist path for growth and suffered a couple of shocks late in the year.

Below are my picks in order of how they stacked up not in shaping the business scene, but rather in how they affected — and will affect — the welfare of Connecticut families.

1. Growth fuels massive state surplus, tax cuts

It’s hard for Connecticut’s naysayer coalition to accept, but the state held its own in income gains and overall growth in 2022, a tough year of inflation everyplace. The CT economy grew at a 1 percent annual rate through September, not a great pace, but good enough to rank No. 12 among states, well ahead of the flat national average. Make no mistake, the home state has plenty of big economic headaches. But aided by a flood of federal pandemic relief cash, the Connecticut state budget logged a surplus of $4.3 billion in 2021-22, plus another $1 billion of relief money we planned to use but didn’t need, plus another $2.8 billion in likely surplus in the last six months. With lawmakers debating how big the tax cuts should be in 2023 after a giveback of $600 million to taxpayers in 2022, taxes and the economy stand as the clear No. 1 story of the year. The “permanent fiscal crisis” that dogged Connecticut for more than a decade is finally over.

2. Inflation leads to struggles and gasoline tax

break

When the first reports of rising inflation came in the spring of 2021, optimists like me blamed the blowup on the supply chain and figured we’d be back to normal by the winter of 2022. We were not. Inflation held at around 8 percent for most of the year — higher for food and energy — disrupting lives and upending Connecticut. The Russian invasion of Ukraine combined with post-COVID consumption to send gasoline and heating oil prices skyrocketing. Lawmakers and Gov. Ned Lamont suspended the

state’s 25-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax from April through December, and will now phase it back in. A Hearst CTInsider-WFSB poll of voters in the fall showed most people saying the CT economy was worse in 2022, not better, as buying power eroded and rising interest rates flattened the housing market.

3. Airline routes take off at two airports

Connecticut’s up-anddown efforts to attract new airline destinations brought triumphs in 2022, and not just at the state’s flagship Bradley International Airport.

Upstart, discount airlines led the charge at Bradley and at Tweed New Haven Airport. In February,

Breeze Airways, which launched local service in 2021, said it would make BDL an east coast hub. By

year’s end the Utah-based carrier had 14 destinations and said it would add four more routes this winter. Spirit Airlines held its maiden flight from Bradley to Montego Bay, Jamaica on Dec. 15, a milestone for the state’s Caribbean-American communities. And in June, Air Canada restarted Bradley flights to and from Toronto. Many of these moves came with state subsidies.

Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo Dita Bhargava, a candidate for state treasurer, makes a campaign stop across from Purdue Pharma in downtown Stamford. A landmark, multistate settlement in March with Stamford-based Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family became the cornerstone of a series of shotgun agreements that culminated years of litigation with makers and distributors of opioid medications.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo An Avelo Airlines flight departs from Tweed New Haven Regional Airport to Orlando. Connecticut’s up-and-down efforts to attract new airline destinations brought triumphs in 2022. Upstart, discount airlines led the charge at Bradley International and at Tweed New Haven airports.

Dan Haar / Hearst Connecticut Media In the kitchen at Transilvania Restaurant and Bar in East Haven. Connecticut employers added 36,000 new positions in the year ending in November, preliminary reports show. The leisure and hospitality sector — think restaurant resurgence — led the job gains as the biggest problem in many industries was finding workers.

Sikorsky / Contributed image A rendering of the Defiant-X helicopter designed by Sikorsky and Boeing as the replacement for the Black Hawk fleet of utility helicopters used by the U.S. Army. Connecticut’s Sikorsky lost a competition to replace its storied Black Hawk helicopter.

Hearst Connecticut Media file photo Eversource Energy workers demonstrate power restoration steps. Eversource and United Illuminating told the state their prices for electric generation, passed along to most customers, would double starting Jan. 1.

Ned Gerard / Hearst CT Media file photo M&T Bank regional offices in the Bridgeport Center building. Connecticut saw its largest homegrown bank cease to exist in 2022 as M&T Bank swallowed People’s United Bank. It did not go smoothly.

Hearst Connecticut Media file photo The Russian invasion of Ukraine combined with post-Covid consumption to send gasoline and heating oil prices skyrocketing in 2022.

Ned Gerard / Hearst CT Media file photo Gov. Ned Lamont speaks during a news conference in front of the state Capitol on Nov. 9.