Connecticut Comptroller Kevin Lembo wants the state to change the way it puts away money for a rainy day.
Much of Connecticut’s rainy day fund depends of a volatile source – the sometimes higher than expected revenues generated by corporations and the state’s wealthiest residents, who make money on Wall Street, and file quarterly returns, Lembo said.
"Historically, the way we make a deposit into the rainy day fund is we wait until the end of the year and we see what’s left and then, maybe, most, or all of it gets deposited into the rainy day fund,” said Lembo.
He’d like to see deposits made into the rainy day fund as soon as the higher than expected revenue is collected, rather than wait until the end of the year, the comptroller said.
If that had been done over the last 20 years, Connecticut would have collected about $5 billion. That’s money that would have helped the state fund many programs that were cut during the last recession, Lembo said.
“I applaud the comptroller for his creative thinking here,” said state Senator Scott Frantz of Greenwich, the Ranking Republican on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee. Other state governments have successfully implemented similar plans, Frantz said.
He expects his committee to take up the proposal.
