By Chris Powell
Since it would widen state government’s “fiscal guardrails” enough to increase spending by 3.8% in its first year and 4.6% in its second, Governor Lamont’s budget proposal for 2025-26 has plenty of room for winners. Who are they?
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First, of course, are state employees. While the governor didn’t mention them in his budget address to the General Assembly last week and news reports don’t seem to have mentioned them either, the Yankee Institute’s Meghan Portfolio reports that his budget provides more than $370 million for raises for state employees even though their pay already has increased 33% since Lamont took office in 2019.
It’s not that Connecticut needs to keep paying big raises or any raises to maintain an adequate state government workforce. The raises are just the price of keeping the 45,000 unionized state employees and their thousands of spouses and dependents voting Democratic in next year’s state election.
State education aid to municipalities would rise and the state property tax credit to homeowners would go up $50 from $300, though as always the tax credit may just facilitate raising municipal government spending and taxes. The tax credit isn’t the fabled property tax “reform.” Indeed, there never will be any. Property tax “reform” is just the euphemism for raising other taxes.
The budget proposes more money for “special education” for disadvantaged students but not the state takeover that fairness demands for the cities, where those students are concentrated.
State government would arrange supportive housing and therapy for 500 more homeless or addicted people.
Tradespeople would enjoy the elimination of their state licensing fees.
The budget would cover free breakfasts for all public school students, a boon especially for poor and neglectful households.
Strangely, the governor proposes to activate an endowment fund from which free pre-school would be financed for as many as 20,000 poor children in seven years. If pre-school is necessary, it should be built into school systems now and financed ordinarily with the rest of schooling.
As for the losers, large corporations would be taxed more and the 10% surcharge on the regular corporation tax would be extended again though it was supposed to be repealed years ago. Encouraging business does not rank high in this budget.
The governor proposes far less money for higher education than the public colleges and universities wanted, but they are bloated and arrogant, as shown by the recent scandal involving the expense accounts of administrators in the State Colleges and Universities System. The governor took a well-deserved shot at them.
The University of Connecticut and the State Colleges and Universities System “have excellent faculty,” the governor said, “but our colleges must focus on the students first, and the importance of higher education does not exempt our universities from making sure that taxpayers and students are getting the best value. They should not be immune to reform, and Connecticut State in particular must reimagine how we train our workforce for 21st-century jobs. Their student population is down 30%, most students don’t graduate, and costs keep escalating.”
While the governor’s budget proposes some overdue increases in Medicaid reimbursements for doctors treating the indigent, the state’s hospitals see disaster in the spending he proposes for them. Legislators may give the governor trouble here.
Riders of public transit buses and the Metro-North commuter rail line would face rate increases, but then it has been years since fares were raised.
Nonprofit social-service agencies doing what is essentially state government work would get an increase but not much even as state employees would get big raises again. The nonprofits just don’t do enough work for the Democratic Party.
Perhaps most disappointing to state residents who don’t make a habit of besieging the state Capitol with their hands out and instead just sullenly pay their taxes, the governor had nothing to say about the state’s high electricity rates, which are so high in large part because of dishonest state policy that hides taxes in electric bills.
Legislators should push this issue into the budget as they rewrite it.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 