Advocates, Lawmakers Call for Budgetary Flexibility

By Hugh McQuaid

January 16 @ 11:23

A coalition of Connecticut advocates, labor leaders, and state legislators crowded into a Hartford conference room Tuesday to make a case for more budgetary flexibility to fund critical investments in education, housing and health care.

The group, called Connecticut For All, argued for modifications to a set of budgetary constraints that include caps on state spending and a requirement that certain revenues be set aside to eventually be used to pay down state debt. In recent years, these restrictions have resulted in supplemental debt payments totaling more than $8.5 billion.

Proponents of modifying these rules argue that these fiscal guardrails have captured a greater share of state revenue than intended and forced Connecticut to underfund certain critical services despite years of budget surpluses.

“It doesn’t matter where you live in this state, this issue affects you,” Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said. “This is an issue that makes it harder for people all across the state, who never imagined this would touch them, to do the things they need to do — the necessary things they need to do.”

The coalition outlined an agenda for this year’s legislative session, during which lawmakers will craft a two-year state budget. The group called for a variety of investments including additional state funding for Connecticut school districts and the restoration of a child tax credit, as well as fair wages and benefits for a range of publicly funded workers.

Rob Baril, president of health care workers’ union, SEIU 1199, said the group would seek improvements in how budget dollars are allocated.

“We formed this coalition because we believe that we shouldn’t have to make choices between funding health care and funding education, between funding child care and making sure that we have the infrastructure that all people in Connecticut need,” Baril said.

Jenny Graves, a special education teacher who serves as vice president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, called for changes to the state’s Education Cost Sharing formula — a program the state uses to offset the costs of local school districts — as well as livable wages for paraeducators.

“Year after year, we see billions in surplus from our fiscal policies,” she said. “It’s time to modify the fiscal roadblocks and invest in equitable education for all, especially our students with special education needs. The time for action is now.”

The event followed a Monday press conference, where Democratic leaders in the House and Senate announced their plans to prioritize education funding and housing policy during this year’s legislative session.

Senate Democrats have also argued for modifications to Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails. Last month, Senate President Martin Looney told the Connecticut Mirror that the chamber’s majority Democrats intended to make changes to the budgetary constraints.

“We won’t call any budget for a vote in the 2025 session if it doesn’t include some changes to the guardrails,” Looney said. “The guardrails are staying, but their parameters need to be updated. The guardrails aren’t a straitjacket.”

Connecticut Legislature to Tackle Housing Affordability

By Hugh McQuaid

January 15 @ 3:08 pm

Addressing Connecticut’s persistent housing shortage will be among this year’s top priorities for the state legislature’s Democratic majorities, leaders of the House and Senate announced during a rare joint press conference this week.

“We know that the lack of housing is holding our economy back,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said during a Monday afternoon press conference in the Legislative Office Building. “We know that too many people are spending too much money every month on their rent or their mortgage because house prices are so high and one of the ways we can tackle that is a supply and demand issue: we need more supply to meet the demand.”

Duff, D-Norwalk, and his House counterpart, Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, have led a working group aimed at addressing Connecticut’s longstanding housing shortage, which has inflated costs.

A 2021 Urban Institute study commissioned by the state Departments of Housing and Social Services identified a 86,000-unit gap in affordable housing available to low income families. Meanwhile, Connecticut had roughly 73,000 unfilled jobs, according to statistics from the Department of Labor. The two numbers were not unrelated, legislative leaders said.

“We do need a lot more affordable housing and it’s workforce housing,” said Sen. Martha Marx, a New London Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Housing Committee. “It’s the housing for the teachers, for the nurses, for even the young engineers at Electric Boat.”

A 2024 Consumer Affairs report ranked Connecticut among the worst states for renters, in part due its high income-to-rent ratio, which found many residents paying 32%, or nearly one-third, of their income in rental costs.

Rojas said he expected lawmakers would focus on a combination of policies designed to encourage the construction of new housing units and protections for renters. Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, said legislative efforts would include policies to encourage the construction of a broad range of housing types in communities across Connecticut.

“We need to build up the populations of the cities and to do that, we need a combination of some single family houses, we need more apartment houses, where people can rent at reasonable rates, we also need more two and three family houses that are owner-occupied with resident incoming coming in as well,” Looney said.

Despite long standing obstacles to enacting effective policy, Duff said the affordability of housing was a pressing issue among many Connecticut residents. He encouraged lawmakers and advocates to find common ground.

“We need everybody to kinda be on the same page so we can make a big difference for people in the state of Connecticut and that’s what I think is going to be very, very important: is actually finding the things that we can do — and it’s not just the answer of building more apartments or we need to build houses,” Duff said. “We can do all those things, because that’s how we’re going to grow our economy.”

Education Funding, Reforms Among Leading Legislative Priorities

by Hugh McQuaid

January 14 @ 9:35 am

Legislative leaders from the House and Senate signaled Monday their intent to bolster funding for Connecticut schools, assist municipalities with the growing need for special education services, while enacting reforms to ensure state dollars are spent in Connecticut classrooms.

Leaders of the Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers offered a glimpse of their top priorities during a rare joint news conference in the Legislative Office Building. School funding — particularly support for special education services — represented a leading priority for both.

“We all know that we need to do all that we can to increase the resources for our entire education system,” Senate President Martin Looney said. “We need to work on preparation for quality preschool and daycare, for our K-12 system, for higher ed and for special ed. So there will be a focus on education throughout the entire spectrum of age from childhood into early adulthood and college graduation.”

Looney was joined by House Speaker Matt Ritter, the majority leaders of the House and Senate, as well as the co-chairs of legislative panels education and special education. The event signaled consensus between the two chambers, which often have distinct priorities.

Connecticut has made consistent and deliberate strides to increase its support of education over the last several years. State budgets adopted by the General Assembly have boosted funding for education by a total of $364 million since fiscal year 2023. The legislature supplemented this support with an additional $150 million dedicated to Education Cost Sharing Grants.

Lawmakers said they would seek to build on that progress during this year’s session by continuing to bolster funding for Connecticut schools. However, those investments will be paired with reforms to enhance state oversight of boards of education and improve transparency in how education dollars are allocated and spent, legislators said.

“We’re going to enact reforms to ensure that these dollars are spent in the classroom on the children directly,” said Sen. Doug McCrory, a Hartford Democrat who co-chairs the Education Committee, “on the children — our resources should be directed towards the children, whose families are looking for a quality education.”

The Monday press conference followed the session’s first meeting of the Education Committee, where lawmakers raised legislative concepts including Senate Bill 1, a priority bill that will eventually contain many of the ideas discussed at the news conference.

The growing need for special education services will be a primary focus, leaders said.

Senator Doug McCory, D-Hartford, discusses education policy during Jan. 13, 2025, press conference on legislative priorities. Credit: Joe Hamann / Senate Democrats

Special education programs are essential but costly, placing a significant financial strain on municipalities. The enrollment of a student with special needs can create unexpected challenges for local budgets.

The state helps to offset the cost of special education services, in part, through an initiative called Excess Cost Grants. These grants are designed to reimburse towns and cities for special education costs when costs associated with a special needs student exceeds 4.5 times the district’s per-pupil expenditures.

In 2022, the legislature amended the Excess Cost Grant program to create a tiered reimbursement structure to ensure that the state’s poorest municipalities were given funding priority. Since then, state budgets have increased funding for the grants by $50 million over the last two fiscal years.

On Monday, legislators said those efforts had not been enough to keep pace with the rapid increase in the need for additional special education funding experienced by Connecticut towns and cities. From fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2023, the estimated cost of fully funding the Excess Cost Sharing Grant program surged from $175.7 million to $203.8 million, according to legislative estimates. That number climbed to $255.1 million in fiscal year 2024.

“At some point there’s a moral obligation in the state of Connecticut,” Ritter said. “We need to help towns, also to support these families so they’re not forum shopping from town to town on where they can get the best services, when they’re already dealing with the fact that they have a child going through, probably, some serious intellectual and physical disabilities and their struggle to get a public education.”