The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Legislative leaders work toward state budget deal
HARTFORD — With the midnight, June 7 adjournment deadline getting ever-closer, state legislators are in the late stages of negotiations for the state’s two-year nearly $50.9 billion spending package, including hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts, to take effect July 1.
“I think that the budget is a good one,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, on Friday afternoon. “It has tax cuts for the vast majority of the people of the state, a higher Earned Income Tax Credit, spends more money on education and the excess costs that are a big driver of local school board funds. This funds a lot of the same programs that were supported last year that people liked. I would expect this to be a bipartisan budget.”
Leaders are targeting Tuesday and Wednesday to debate and vote on the tax-and-spending packages, depending on final details and the logistics of printing the documents at a time of sustained multi-billion-dollar budget surpluses.
“We’re continuing to make progress on the budget,” said Adam Joseph, director of communications for Gov. Ned Lamont, during a Friday interview. On Thursday, Lamont was optimistic that a final deal was imminent. “I think we’re very close,” Lamont told a few reporters in the Capitol. “I think you’ve heard me say that before. Right now, all the numbers we agreed to are going through the (Office of Fiscal Analysis) and (Office of Policy and Management) mill, which means making sure the numbers as presented add up in an honestly balanced budget.”
But a few undisclosed sticking points remained, particularly between Democrats who have solid majorities of 98-53 in the House and 24-12 in the Senate, and the Democratic governor.
Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, was less-optimistic on Thursday, the day before he and House Majority Leader Jason Rojas were scheduled to join the NCAA-champion UConn men’s basketball team, along with the governor and constitutional officers, for a reception with President Joe Biden in the White House.
“I am breathing, I am taking it all in. Everything is going to be fine,” Ritter told reporters in his office. “On behalf of the speaker we continue to engage the governor’s office on the budget,” Rojas added.
“We’re trying to get closer,” said House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, “We are stuck on items that should be able to be resolved. A few items, a few pieces of spending, these initiatives are important, I think, to both caucuses and we’re hopeful that the governor will come around. It’s under $50 million at this point.”
Under the Finance Committee tax plan, earners in the 5-percent tax rate would see their rate reduced to 4.75 percent for single filers making less than $100,000 and joint filers with incomes of less than $200,000, saving them more than $219 million in the 2024 and 2025 tax years. Lamont had proposed reducing the 5 percent rate to 4.5 percent as part of an overall plan for $267.3 million in tax relief for the fiscal year that starts July 1 and nearly $544 million in the second year of the biennium. The Finance
Committee proposed more than $700 million in tax breaks over the biennium, on top of the $615 million already in the current fiscal year
that runs through June 30.
Last month the legislative Appropriations Committee approved a two-year, $50.9 billion
budget that would include a spending increase of more than $400 million above Lamont’s proposal delivered in February.