Budget committee doesn’t adjust $51B spending package
For the first time since the pandemic-shortened 2020 legislative session, the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee did not adjust the second year of the biennium budget.
On their deadline day Thursday, committee leaders on both sides of the aisle said they would also ignore Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget changes made in February and would not offer their own adjustments, defaulting to the second year of the $51 billion budget that was signed into law last year and would take effect on July 1.
The committee’s nonaction, will become the center of negotiations between the governor and the General Assembly as it heads to its midnight May 8 adjournment deadline. The committee also declined to make budget adjustments in 2008 and as far back as 1993.
“We will be outlining some policy priorities: higher education, nonprofits, mental health that we believe the limited state dollars that may be available should be invested in,” said Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chairwoman of the budgetwriting panel. “We’re going to hope, as we move forward that in discussions that our legislative leaders have and Gov. Lamont will take these priorities into consideration as they begin the budget deliberations.”
State Rep. Toni Walker, D-New Haven, the longtime co-chairwoman of the committee, said it’s unusual that the committee is not doing its own budget.
“I think we did that because in looking at what it would do to our revenues by having to open up the budget, and also looking at some of the reductions that were proposed, we felt that we had established some very clear issues that we wanted to maintain in what we do here in Appropriations, because we hear the public in every one of our meetings, in our public hearings, and this year it was just as loud: education, education, education. Nonprofits, nonprofits, nonprofits. Those were the things we heard every single night. We have to listen to the people. That’s why we have the public hearings.”
Walker said the second year of the budget will become the “platform” for further discussions, which are bound to include more spending, depending on negotiations with Lamont, who has stressed the importance of adhering to fiscal restrictions approved in 2017 and reinforced last year by the legislature.
“We believe it’s important that we have a community and a commitment to keeping our state moving forward, not backward,” Walker said, thanking Republicans for their input during the subcommittee and public hearing process.
Osten said that leaders do not intend to bypass the restrictions, called “guardrails” by lawmakers.
“We’re at a point in time today where we have the underlying budget, which was voted upon by both chambers on a nearly bipartisan basis and was signed by the governor and in essence we have made a decision by not opening up that budget today, to uphold promises that we keep,” said Sen. Eric Berthel of Watertown, a ranking Republican on the committee.
He noted that one of the budget changes offered by Lamont in February was to reduce support for public schools under the Educational Cost Sharing program. “My only concern and the caution flag that I would raise is that I will remain skeptical of opportunities, if you will, or attempts to work around our very important guardrails that have put Connecticut in the best position it’s been financially in the 10 years that I have sat in this building,” Berthel said.
Lamont’s proposed budget adjustments included a doubling of state funding for a variety of housing opportunities and increase by $20 million the state’s spending for early childhood education. He also proposed using millions of dollar in federal pandemic relief to help residents pay off as much as $650 million in medical debt; and the redistribution of about 200 million in estimated unspent savings.
Julias Bergman, spokesperson for Lamont, said the governor expects to soon begin discussions with legislative leaders.
“As the Governor has repeatedly said, the twoyear budget that passed less than a year ago on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis sent a strong message about our priorities by delivering the largest middle-class tax cut in state history, while making historic investments in K-12 and higher education, early childhood, housing, and social services,” Bergman said. “We will be sitting down with legislative leaders in the coming weeks to continue the progress we’ve made in the upcoming fiscal year.”
Gian-Carl Casa, president and CEO of the CT Nonprofit Alliance, was encouraged by the nonaction, noting that as the budget is still in surplus, more should be invested in social services that in recent decades have shifted from state agencies to nonprofits.
“Connecticut’s revenue system is delivering hundreds of millions of dollars more than is needed to fund the state budget, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future,” he said in a statement. “We appreciate that the Appropriations Committee and legislative leaders are working to find a way to allocate additional much-needed funding for some programs, and that nonprofit human services are one of their top priorities. Nonprofits who contract with the wealthiest state in the country to provide services for the most vulnerable people in the state, deserve to be properly funded. We will continue to make our case for more funding to legislators and the governor in the coming weeks.”