Another day without a state budget

HARTFORD — Legislative leaders were relaxed and confident that they are making progress toward a final budget deal, but the governor was antsy and disappointed on Thursday that a goal to have a compromise spending package by the end of this week is not going to happen.

“Today we got through more and more information,” said Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven. “I think we are getting closer and closer.”

Nonpartisan legislative staff were in and out of the spacious House Democratic caucus room on the second floor of the Capitol, going over potential school funding formulas and other issues that have stymied lawmakers in what has been the nation’s longest budget impasse of the year. “We are definitely headed in the absolute right direction.”

Republican and Democratic Senate and House leaders met for about three hours Thursday, then told reporters around 3:30 that they were hesitant to reveal too many details because the closed-door talks are confidential, and any possible agreements have to first be brought back to the four separate House and Senate caucuses for further discussion, then taken to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

“This is a lot of minuteto-minute, hour-by-hour, line-by-line work that has to be done or we can’t figure out if we’re going to come to an agreement,” said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, RDerby. Both Klarides and Fasano said they want a resolution to the state’s

hospital tax and $90-million Medicaid reimbursement from the federal government, but Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz said that he expects it to be part of a final budget compromise to present to Malloy. “The hospital deal is certainly important,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.

Aresimowicz said thorny issues such as a GOP-proposed

spending cap and a proposed $2,500-a-year tax on teachers, remain under discussion among the leaders. He said there is a 25page list of items “that are either close enough or far away enough” upon which leaders remain focused. He said that lawmakers will be told to keep up on the week of the October 23 to possibly debate and vote on a new budget.

Malloy said he was disappointed.

“I imagine, like most of the people of Connecticut, the last number of months

since February have been frustrating and here we are a week after leader-only meetings started, without significant progress.” Malloy told reporters later in the afternoon. “It’s apparent that they remain hundreds of millions of dollars apart.”

The governor vetoed a Republican budget last month that got a handful of Democratic votes in the House and Senate, sending legislative leaders back to the negotiating table while state government runs by executive order for the fiscal year that began July 1.

After Malloy’s meeting with reporters, Fasano criticized him.

“The governor’s daily press conferences and snide comments from the sidelines are extremely unproductive,” said Fasano. “The governor has been nothing but an impediment to the budget process, and it has been helpful to remove him from our conversations.”

Malloy

Fasano