Majority Democrats in the Connecticut Senate on Thursday backed off some of the party's earlier ideas for balancing the state budget, including suspending the public campaign funding program for next year's legislative elections.
The caucus also embraced an idea proposed by the General Assembly's GOP: offering a retirement incentive program for state employees.
"The Senate Democratic Caucus believes that it is vitally important that we come to the table with a proposal that makes achievable structural changes to our budget,'' said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, adding that the plan reduces the state's bottom line by $350 million in 2016. The current $20 billion budget has a shortfall that ranges from $350 million to $370 million, according to legislators' estimates.
The revised plan comes days after the House and Senate Democrats released a joint plan to fix the current projected shortfall. It's unclear whether the House Democrats have signed off on the revised proposal.
Among the new changes, Senate Democrats proposed restoring funding to the state's rainy-day fund, vocational and technical schools, behavioral health services, transportation programs and needy public schools. The plan also promises $163 million in savings over two years from a new retirement incentive program, but no details were provided.
Legislative Republicans have proposed a retirement incentive only for employees now eligible to retire that would save $175.5 million over two years. GOP leaders said they welcomed the Senate Democrats' proposed changes.
The revised plan also fully restores $11.7 million to the Citizens Election Program. Numerous election reform advocates, the State Elections Enforcement Commission and former Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell publicly balked at the proposal to suspend the program for the 2016 elections. SEEC issued an unusual joint resolution Tuesday, warning that such a move would set the program "on course for permanent underfunding.''
Democratic and Republican legislative leaders and Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy have been meeting privately to come up with a plan to close the current budget shortfall and address long-term fiscal problems. A special legislative session on the midyear budget changes may be held next month.
