Tough choices ahead on budget talks

As budget talk heats up in Hartford between the governor’s office and the General Assembly, the sense of alarm from varying quarters has grown significantly. Nonprofits say they’re being shortchanged. Higher education leaders warn of layoffs. Municipalities say aid from the state is not keeping up with needs. Everyone is trying to be heard above the din.

It bears repeating that this is happening at a time of unprecedented budget surpluses. This isn’t the bad old days when the future was dominated by red ink. Instead, we’re taking in far more as a state than we’re spending, with the result that we’re paying down long-term obligations and planning a big tax cut, the details of which are yet to be determined.

To hear from various stakeholders around the Capitol, you’d never know it. The predictions of doom from, to name one interest group, higher education if current budget proposals pass would make you think the budget was in a perpetual deficit.

The issue is the guardrails. The General Assembly, as one of its first orders of business this year, passed rules that severely limit spending options for the next few years to direct surpluses toward paying pension obligations rather than funding new programs. Proponents, including the governor, say this is necessary so that the state doesn’t go right back into crisis once the good times end, as they inevitably will.

Lawmakers may object, but the rules are in place as passed by the Assembly. Now everyone has to live with them. The result is that many people are going to be disappointed with whatever budget is ultimately passed.

Interest groups are using the current interim period as a time to make their cases. Leaders of the state college and university system say they are facing hundreds of layoffs and potentially the closure of campuses. Nonprofit groups say their workers, called “heroes” during the height of the pandemic, deserve to be treated as such.

But not all groups making their case are the same. Take, for instance, the campaign being led to speed up a K-12 spending increase, which is being championed by a coalition of education leaders and the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. There is no one who would say education doesn’t deserve more, but this is not a straightforward request.

The crux of the issue is an already planned increase in the Education Cost Sharing grant that supplements local property taxes to pay for public schools. A coalition active in Hartford wants that increase phased in faster. It is also seeking increased funding for charter schools, which has been much less discussed.

Charter schools have their supporters, but if their funding mechanism is going to be changed, it should happen on its own merits, not as an add-on to an otherwise straightforward funding increase to traditional K-12 public schools, which serve a huge majority of students.

Lawmakers and the governor’s office have to make many choices in coming weeks, and due to the nature of this request and its underpublicized aspects, it is clear that the K-12 funding piece could be left behind.