The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Gov. looking to build on gains
HARTFORD — Gov. Ned Lamont on Wednesday kicked off the short, 13-week General Assembly session by proposing a small spending increase and progressive legislative proposals that provide a stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s conservative agenda in Washington.
In a 43-minute speech to a joint session of the House and Senate, Lamont bragged that Wall Street rating agencies have given Connecticut higher marks because of the state’s robust emergency reserves and relative fiscal stability during his first year in office.
“Economic growth picked up last year,” Lamont told a packed House chamber. “That means businesses and young families are now giving Connecticut a second look. They’re talking about Connecticut and we’re responding. For a while in Connecticut, it wasn’t just Democrats and Republicans who were not talking to each other, it was that state government that was not connecting with business leaders, labor leaders, educators and the hospitals. We had a failure to communicate.”
The address was in sharp contrast to the Tuesday night
State of the Union speech in Congress. Lamont stressed the importance of the social safety net and pledged he would again push for recreational marijuana for adult use, and touted the state’s goal to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2040.
Recalling a recent conversation with a top submarine commander
at an event in Groton, Lamont said the admiral planned to raise building sites farther up the banks off of the Thames River because of global climate change.
“If submariners are worried about rising tides, so should we,” Lamont said during remarks that ranged from fiscally prudent to outright cheerleading.
“No more bad-mouthing Connecticut,” he shouted to a bipartisan standing ovation. “This is an amazing state.”
By contrast, when Lamont spoke about providing free community college for students, Republican lawmakers neither stood nor applauded — although liberal Democrats oppose Lamont’s plan to curtail the free tuition program, scheduled to take effect next fall, sharply.
Republicans warned that Lamont wants to increase cap
ital spending and is apparently abandoning his “debt diet” of last year that turned the heads of Wall Street investors.
“I think his budget is less people-friendly,” said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby. “This notion that you’re either/or pro-business makes me crazy because they both should go hand-in-hand. It’s the narrative they perpetuated throughout and I think that’s really sad for the state of Connecticut.”
“What stood out to me is the fact that he did a $1.8billion tax increase from last year, and promised tax relief, and I didn’t hear about that this year,” said Senate Majority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven. “I didn’t hear about the promises of no more fees. He re-instituted the 10-percent corporate tax. All that stuff is negative for the state of Connecticut. I heard about a debt diet that no longer exists. He’s breaking that promise.”
The size of last year’s tax increase is a matter of dispute. Counting only additional tax collections, not extensions of taxes scheduled to end, and only taxes in the current fiscal year, it was about $400 million. The corporate earnings tax was scheduled to end after this year, but Lamont wants it to continue, with $22.5 million in revenue in 2020-21.
The State of the State speech marked the start of Lamont’s second year of his four-year term, as well as the start of a General Assembly election cycle in which Democrats hold a 90-61 majority in the House and 22-14 in the Senate.
Joseph Brennan, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said he was generally pleased with the governor’s focus on jobs and the economy in the second year of the two-year budget. “Hopefully we’re turning the corner and the governor wants to be a cheerleader for Connecticut and wants to talk about positive things, but reality has got to match perception,” Brennan said outside the House chamber. “On balance it’s kind of what we expected.”
Brennan is concerned that $40 million in proposed revenue increases in Lamont’s budget falls heavily on business, including the corporate tax surcharge. “That’s problematic,” Brennan said. “I think we can get rid of it.”
The governor’s budget has to make its way through the legislative process that ends at midnight May 6. The proposal would hike spending in the budget year that starts July 1 by $122 million — six tenths of 1 percent — over the version of the budget approved last year, for total of $22.3 billion.
Other key issues include school funding and the reimbursement levels for cities that host tax-exempt properties including hospitals and colleges, as Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, sees it.
In response to Trump’s cuts to Planned Parenthood, Lamont’s budget includes an additional $1.5 million for non-profit women’s health organizations that had been cut $2 million from Connecticut’s share of federal Title X program. Trump ordered those cuts with the support of national anti-abortion advocates.
Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, and two New Haven providers, the Cornell Scott - Hill Health Center and Fair Haven Community Health Care, would benefit from the restoration. The issue was already on the agenda for Democratic leaders in the legislature, including Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk.
“The Senate Democratic caucus has been very vocal in its support for Planned Parenthood funding and for women’s health care,” Duff said in an interview. “These funds will replace money that has been cruelly stricken by the Trump administration that does nothing more than assuring health care for women who are very poor. I am glad the governor agrees with us and I look forward to working together to assure this funding is in our state budget.”
Lamont’s signature trucktolling legislation continues to hang in the balance. It failed to become the subject of a special session that the governor wanted before the regular session. While there is no scheduled date set for a debate or vote on highway tolls in the House and Senate, Democratic leaders expect to bring up the issue before the end of the month, possibly Feb. 18.
As Lamont spoke, a small group of protesters from environmental groups rallied to oppose a planned gas-powered electricity generation plant in Killingly, which they said hurts Lamont’s hopes to move the state to 100 percent fossilfree generation by 2040. Lamont can halt the plans, they insisted.
By 7:30 a.m., parents opposed to mandatory vaccinations for their children had lined up along the Capitol Avenue sidewalk in front of the Capitol carrying signs protesting legislative plans to require them to inoculate their kids if they want to attend public school. “Vaccine Makers are Exempt from Liability,” said one sign. “My Faith is in God Not Pharma,” said another. About 300 protesters marched to the north entrance of the Capitol for a pre-session rally at about 9:30.
Looney, the top Democrat in the state Senate, said the presence of the protesters would not affect pending plans for legislation to end the religious exemption for parents who do not want their children vaccinated, but still want them to attend public schools.
“The issue is that there should not be an exemption for anything except healthrelated reasons,” Looney said.