Democratic and Republican legislative leaders in Connecticut have finally begun meeting to negotiate second-year adjustments to the $41 billion bipartisan budget they passed last year. The negotiations are starting with only a day left in the state’s legislative session, which ends at midnight on Wednesday.
Senator Cathy Osten of Sprague, the Senate Democratic chair of the Appropriations Committee, is optimistic that a bipartisan agreement can be reached with her Republican counterparts in the budget-writing committee before the session ends on Wednesday.
“We were here at 9:00 in the morning meeting we them. We met with them over the weekend. We think that there is a big interest in coming up with a bipartisan solution to adjustments to our current bipartisan budget.”
That budget is already $387 million in deficit for this fiscal year that ends on June 30. However, since the beginning of the year, state income tax collections have been much higher than had been projected. This has resulted in a more than $1 billion surplus.
At issue is how to spend that money. It’s officially designated for the state’s Rainy Day Fund, but some lawmakers would like to use a portion of it to close the deficit. Others are pushing to use some of the money to restore funding to a number of programs that were cut, including education funding and aid to towns and cities. Governor Malloy, who’s not part of the negotiations, is urging lawmakers to leave most of the money in the Rainy Day Fund.
