Malloy pitches compromise budget plan to lawmakers

Uncertain whether Wednesday night deadline can be met

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy offered his third budget for the new fiscal year, pitching a compromise Monday that cuts his big transportation initiative, while asking legislators to reduce a sales-tax-sharing plan — but not by as much as he originally sought.

Malloy would scale back his plans to reduce funding for hospitals, but also would impose deeper reductions on mental health and substance abuse treatment programs than legislators have proposed.

But whether that plan would successfully spark a budget deal before the General Assembly session ends at midnight Wednesday probably would hinge on some overnight political magic. House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D- Hamden, talking with reporters around 8 p.m. Monday, said negotiations between the two branches — which have stalled since late last week — need to resume and bear fruit by this morning.

Sharkey was careful not to set a hard deadline. Rather he cited legislative logistics.

Lawmakers and Malloy need to agree on a spending and revenue plan, policy language to implement budgetary changes, and a bonding bill to set the state’s capital program.

It can take many hours for staff to prepare a bill, and measures generally have to be presented to rank-and-file lawmakers in closed-door caucuses before they are brought out for a floor debate.

And these fiscal bills would have to clear both the House and Senate.

Is there a chance to get all of this done by midnight Wednesday?

“I think there is, if we can get that done this evening,” said Sharkey, who met privately Monday afternoon with Malloy and Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. “That is why we are all sequestered right now to go through the budget again line by line — literally line by line — to identify those areas where we could try to find those necessary cuts.”

The speaker said “the gover- nor has made some significant changes to his early positions from a policy standpoint,” adding that the pressure of the adjournment deadline also helps to “keep people focused on the task at hand. It may not happen. We may not get there, but it would be better if we did.”

The governor’s $19.74 billion proposal adds $42 million to the bottom line Malloy offered legislators last week, effectively matching the spending level the legislature’s Democratic majority is seeking.

The new budget, like the governor’s earlier two, would not increase taxes.

Malloy has been pressing the legislature’s Democratic majority to accept more spending reductions and to reduce their reliance on temporary revenues and other onetime budget solutions that only help balance the budget in the 2016-17 fiscal year.

That’s because, while there is a $960 million shortfall in state finances starting July 1, the projected deficit for the 2017-18 fiscal year is about $ 2.25 billion, according to a forecast from the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis based on the latest state revenue estimates.