CT lawmakers cut $350 million from the state budget to close a widening deficit on Tuesday and reduced corporate taxes to thwart criticism that the state is unfriendly to business.
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“We are trying to move forward as quickly as we can”, Senate President Martin Looney told reporters following Monday’s caucus. It also cut around $200 million from next year’s budget, though not enough to meet a projected deficit of $552 million for that year. Looney said Democrats found common ground with the Republicans on issues such as reducing state employee overtime and eventually closing the Southbury Training School and other state facilities for the developmentally disabled.
Despite earlier calls from some lawmakers to possibly scale back Malloy’s proposed 20-year, $100 billion transportation overhaul, no changes were made.
Democrats also would defer a $70.4 million deposit owed to a special new revenue-sharing program created to help cities and towns control property tax hikes.
This year, CT faces a $350 million budget gap.
$2 million from a program to fit school buses with seat belts.
The plan does make permanent a portion of the $103 million in emergency spending cuts Malloy ordered in September in response to weaker-than-anticipated state income tax receipts.
The package restores some of the cuts Malloy imposed earlier to the state’s hospitals, which launched a statewide ad campaign warning the reductions could harm services and patients, and to social service agencies.
“While this may or may not be a bipartisan vote, it is a bipartisan package”, Duff said.
Senate Minority Leader Leonard Fasano, R-North Haven, said Monday the lawmakers had agreed not to go public with details of their discussions.
Asked about the long-term consequences, Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said: “The economy’s different since the Great Recession, our economic recovery is different, and I think that is true amongst many states across this country”. The issue of the combined reporting, along with the transportation lockbox, are extremely important to how they perceive the state and how we’re moving our finances along….
“At the end of the process, they were not in favor of making structural changes”, Fasano said.
The Connecticut House of Representatives failed Tuesday to approve a constitutional amendment for voters to decide in 2016 on whether to ensure funds collected for transportation are actually used for transportation.
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The cap has been particularly controversial over the past decade as rising retirement benefit costs ate up much of the allowable spending growth.
