Malloy offers ‘lean’ budget
Governor’s latest plan would cut $144 million more in spending
In a bid to end Connecticut’s budget stalemate and persuade legislators to abandon a legally questionable deferral of contributions to the state’s underfunded pension system, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy unveiled his fourth budget proposal for the new biennium Monday. It asks lawmakers to reduce tax increases by accepting deeper cuts to town aid, education and social services.
The governor’s new plan would reduce spending by an additional $144 million, over this fiscal year and next combined, compared to a budget endorsed by Malloy and Democratic legislative leaders that fell short of passage when three Democrats in the Senate and five in the House balked and voted for a GOP version.
Malloy’s revisions to the September plan maintains emergency relief for distressed municipalities by in-
cluding a revised formula for redistributing education aid. It largely abandons the controversial shift of funding from wealthy communities to poorer ones originally sought by the governor.
“This is a lean, no-frills, no-nonsense budget,” Malloy said in a prepared statement. “Our goals were simple in putting this plan together: eliminate unpopular tax increases, incorporate ideas from both parties, and shrink the budget and its accompanying legislation down to their essential parts. It is my sincere hope this document will aid the General Assembly in passing a budget that I can sign into law.”
One pivotal question is whether his plan was designed to win back enough of the defecting Democrats for passage, attract GOP votes or a combination of the two.
Bipartisan acceptance of his revisions seem unlikely, if only because of his continued insistence on the state’s meeting its pension obligations. The GOP-crafted budget cuts contributions to pension funds for teachers and state employees by $411 million, which Malloy says is one of the fiscal gimmicks employed by past administrations that have contributed to Connecticut’s chronic fiscal challenges.
The governor and state employee unions say the GOP cuts are based on pension changes that would not survive a legal challenge. GOP leaders insist their plan is defensible.
Malloy also faulted the GOP plan for directing the governor to find an extra $260 million in savings after the two-year budget is in force. That’s on top of an unprecedented $1.84 billion in savings the governor already has said he could achieve.
Scaling back tax increases to gain votes
Malloy’s political challenge is to propose a budget that is attractive to the fiscally conservative Democrats who abandoned him in September — or, less likely, some of the Republicans who unanimously voted against the Democratic bill — while not alienating liberals.
Malloy is asking Democratic legislators to scrap several tax and fee increases they negotiated with his office in mid-September, including:
A statewide property tax on second homes.
A 49-cent surcharge on monthly cell phone bills.
A new fee on fantasy sports betting contests.
And cancellation of only $30 million in tax breaks to be determined next fiscal year, instead of the $50 million the compromise originally called for.
He also abandoned a criminal-justice reform that would have expanded a youthful offender program to save young adults from criminal records. The measure was opposed by at least one of the Senate Democrats who voted against the September plan.
And he made a significant concession on education aid.
Malloy would cut overall state spending on education by about $132 million this fiscal year — mostly hitting affluent and middle-income communities as cuts to the state’s primary education grant — the Education Cost Sharing grant. The ECS grants would total $1.9 billion under the plan — a 6 percent cut in state support.
But Malloy significantly changed his initial request to funnel an additional $300 million to the state’s 30 lowest-performing districts. Instead they would receive just $7.7 million more this fiscal year — an increase of just one half of 1 percent. The Democrats’ budget would have increased aid to these towns by $11 million.
Those districts, like all others, would be expected to pick up part of their teacher retirement costs for the first time, wiping out any gains for these districts.
The Republican plan increases overall education aid by $68 million this fiscal year, though struggling districts would not have a higher priority than they do currently for that additional aid. The 30 lowest-achieving districts would get a $46 million increase, and the better-off communities would receive $22 million more. No towns would lose aid.
Malloy’s plan includes measures certain to be unpopular among many Democratic lawmakers.
It maintains the new requirement that cities and towns cover a portion of the required contribution to the teachers’ pension fund, about $282 million over the biennium. The state, not municipalities, now contributes to the teacher pensions.
Lawmakers of both parties have balked at imposing this expense on communities.
The Connecticut Council of Small Towns also remains steadfastly opposed to this cost-sharing.
“Requiring towns to pick up millions of dollars in teachers’ pension costs without giving towns any opportunity to manage these costs going forward is simply unfair,” said COST Executive Director Betsy Gara. “Towns have had no say in managing the teachers’ pension fund or in negotiating benefits or contribution levels, which are set forth in statute. … Accordingly, COST is determined to pursue legal action if a budget is adopted that shifts teachers’ pension costs to towns.”
The governor would expand a tax hike on the working poor by reducing an income tax credit those households receive. By lowering the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) from 27.5 percent to 23 percent of the federal EITC, the state would reduce state income tax refunds for those households by $72 million. The compromise plan in September had reduced those refunds by $51 million.
The top Democrats in the Senate, President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney of New Haven and Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, said they would review the governor’s proposal. “It is important that all parties make progress toward reaching a final budget agreement that provides predictability and stability for families, school districts, social service providers and businesses,” they wrote in a joint statement.
“I appreciate the governor’s effort to try and help move our budget negotiations toward a final agreement,” added House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin. “I look forward to fully reviewing his latest compromises, and continuing our bipartisan discussions on how best to move our state forward and get to a budget that becomes law.”
Connecticut has gone threeand-a-half months into the new fiscal year without an approved budget. Analysts say state finances, unless adjusted, will run $1.6 billion in deficit this fiscal year and $1.9 billion in the red in 2018-19.
Much of that gap is driven by surging retirement benefit and debt costs and by declining income tax receipts.
Malloy, who has been running state finances by executive order since July 1, has been shut out of budget negotiations for the last two weeks as legislative leaders try to strike a bipartisan deal.
The governor has been wary, though, since leaders announced last week they were considering backing several of the GOP cost-cutting proposals that led to Malloy’s veto.