Senator Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, said, “The budget passed today is critical to move our state forward. On the plus side, this budget provides continued state funding for our towns and schools. It continues funding for college scholarships. This budget provides funding for critical human and social services, services like early childhood education. But this budget also raises taxes on our lower-income citizens by changing the EITC credit. This budget cuts funding for UCONN and the CSU system too much; higher education is our advantage as a state. This budget cuts funding to CEN and OSB, which hurts economic development efforts to improve Connecticut’s broadband infrastructure. But our job is to pass a budget, and tonight we passed a budget. Next session we will come back and revisit the shortcomings in this spending plan. For now, we move forward with a budget for the citizens of Connecticut.”