Conversations about the second year of the biennial budget continue with Democratic leadership focused on areas including higher education and nonprofits for additional funding.
Speaker of the House Matt Ritter said that he doesn’t believe there will be a fight to try to adjust the budget. Ritter has said that about $300 million in additional spending will need to be found, but that he doesn’t anticipate that being a problem.
Ritter said that the additional spending will go toward four main areas: higher education, nonprofit organizations, mental health services for children, and municipal aid.
The speaker said those will account for 75-85% of the additions to the $26 billion budget.
However, he said there will be no changes to the bipartisan budget that was agreed upon last year. Ritter said the cuts proposed by the governor and others – namely taking funds from K-12 in order to give roughly $43 million to early childhood care – will not be implemented.
“It’s really hard to do wholesale stuff in the second year of a budget,” he said.
There is some thought that federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act could play a part in making up the deficit, but it is still unclear how much that money remains unspent.
Julia Bergman, spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont, said in a statement that the governor’s office is looking forward to continuing conversations with leaders in the legislature to “better understand how they would like to prioritize unspent ARPA dollars.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora said that he thinks he and his Republican colleagues are being left out of budget discussions. He charged that the budget will end up being decided behind closed doors.
“I am concerned. I don’t think there’s $300 million around to be found for additional spending,” Candelora said. “But we’d love to see their plan, I’m just disappointed we didn’t see it in the Appropriations Committee where it should be.”
Candelora said that if a full budget isn’t agreed upon in the new session, then making cuts to fix a possible deficit will fall into the governor’s hands.
“That’s something that Republicans don’t want to see.,” he said. “We’d rather work on a solution collectively, because we do believe that revenues aren’t going in the right direction.”
Ritter said that conversations are ongoing, and that the goal is not to infringe too far on the fiscal guardrails. Still, he said some members of the legislature need to be more flexible with the guardrails and how they are implemented.
First implemented in 2017, the guardrails are mostly made up of a spending cap on the government that was put in place to help the state save money and begin to pay down debts like unfunded pensions. They require a signature from the governor in order to override.
However, some Democrats say that the guardrails should be looser, and that Lamont and republicans should be more flexible.
The guardrails themselves, Ritter said, can become a thorn in the side of the legislature.
“(The guardrails) become an issue when you can’t do the things you want to do.”
Ritter said that if the guardrails remain untouchable, then it’s possible they will not be renewed when they expire in 2028.
“If you want your legacy to be that you were so strident in your views, so unwilling to negotiate and compromise, that you ruined it, I don’t know if that’s any better than saying you were really strong on them,” he said. “A good legacy for all of us is to find a way for these guardrails to continue in a fashion that does both.”
Rojas said that the guardrails should be re-evaluated when the time comes.
“Like any policy, they should be re-evaluated,” he said.
