Budget in turmoil as deadline looms

A battle over state budget adjustments is still brewing at the Capitol as the Legislature’s adjournment deadline — midnight Wednesday — ticks ever closer.

Democrats Tuesday said they continued to hope Republicans would come to the negotiating table to help revise the party’s fiscal 2019 budget into a plan that both parties can back.

“We’re hoping to have some progress,” said House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin. “It’s still our goal not to run competing budgets that will never become law.”

But Republicans would like to see the budget plan they crafted put to a vote. They revised their proposal as late as Tuesday morning to include restoring coverage for 13,000 low-income working parents on HUSKY A Medicaid health insurance — something that lawmakers from cities, many of whom are Democrats, have advocated.

“It has become clear that Democrat legislative leaders would rather resolve just a few items in the short term than work on a budget that truly meets the needs of our state,” said Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, in a statement Tuesday evening. “We are hopeful that this updated budget can unite lawmakers before the legislative session ends.”

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said her caucus will call the Republican budget as an amendment — forcing a vote — if they have to.

“There are enough people in this state who are sick and tired of the same old, same old of what is going on,” she said. “The Democrats have been in control for over 40 years, and there is a Democrat governor.”

Both parties’ budgets increase funding for bus and rail operations to avoid service cutbacks and fare hikes, eliminate cuts to the Medicare Savings Program and restores some municipal aid.

They differ over how much money to leave in the state’s Rainy Day Fund, the amount of education spending and how to fund transportation expenses.

Last fall, a GOP-sponsored budget drew modest Democratic support in the Senate and House . ... Joe Aresimowicz promised a Republican budget would not pass the House now.

Democrat and Republican leaders are expected to continue negotiations all day, a continuation of meetings over the weekend and Monday night.

Negotiations within the Democratic party are critical. Democrats could push their budget adjustment through the House and Senate with no Republican

votes, but an 18-18 tie in the Senate means Democrats cannot afford to lose one vote in that chamber.

Conservative Democrats Sens. Joan Hartley, D-Waterbury, and Gayle Slossberg, D-Milford, have several times foiled the efforts of their more liberal colleagues on spending or taxation issues. In April, Slossberg said she might vote against her party's proposal in the hopes of arriving at a bipartisan budget, like that passed in October — after four months of dedicated debate.

“To herd everyone together is going to be relatively impossible, I believe,” Fasano said Monday.

If all negotiations fail and an adjustment is not passed by Wednesday at midnight, the state will still have a budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. It will enact the bipartisan plan laid out by legislators in October with the two-year biennium budget.