“What we need to do for our state is put it in rehab.”

HARTFORD — The Democrat-dominated Senate on Thursday rolled back state spending, approving a $19.7 billion budget that would take effect July 1 and erase a projected $960 million deficit.

Amid Republican criticism and a flurry of failed GOP amendments — including two attempts to reduce the state’s public financing for elections — the fourth of five budget-related bills, on state bonding for capital projects, was approved 34-2 at 12:09 a.m. Friday. Earlier Thursday, the main budget bill passed along party lines 21-15 after more than three hours of debate around 5 o’clock.

While the package heads to the House for final debate and expected approval today, the Senate, which had a four-hour dinner recess Thursday night and did not return to work until 9:15 p.m., still has to act on this year’s follow-up to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s “Second Chance Society” legislation.

“We had to make cuts in many places that we did not want to make,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. “We have to be realistic and we know what the new reality is.”
The budget includes $866 million in spending reductions and tens of millions of dollars in savings from layoffs. Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, ranking member of the Finance Committee, predicted that as many as 2,600 layoffs may result. Malloy expects at least 2,000 and the current total of terminations is 889.

Public employee unions, however, warned Thursday that as many 5,000 layoffs could result, along with layoffs of local school teachers, if the budget is enacted. Some workers gathered in the Capitol on Thursday in attempt to have the budget rejected and taxes raised instead on the state’s wealthiest, who pay 6.99-percent taxes at higher income levels.

“In this proposed budget, criminal justice services in the Judicial Branch suffer nearly $50 million in cuts,” said Carmen Roda of Norwalk, an adult probation officer and president of the Judicial Professional Employees Union. “Simply put, this budget threatens our state’s quality of life by jeopardizing community safety.”

GOP dissent

“We’re just trying to get by budget-after-budget,” said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, whose caucus put forward six amendments that were shot down in partisan votes. He said that a GOP budget proposed last month would have spared the state from layoffs and provided major budgetary changes that would erase projected future deficits as well.

“At some point we have to admit we’ve made a mistake,” said Sen. Rob Kane, R-Watertown, whose district includes Seymour and Oxford.

“Unfortunately, the children are the ones that are going to suffer because of this,” said Sen. Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford. “What we need to do for our state is put it in rehab.“

Tough choices

Frantz said the recent state budgets have resulted in some of the state’s wealthiest earners to move elsewhere.

“They don’t like the balance sheet of Connecticut and they don’t like to be treated like second-class citizens and demonized,” Frantz said. “We simply can’t afford it as a state. We have reached a point where we’re unfortunately going to have to make people hurt.”

On two separate pieces of legislation, GOP lawmakers proposed taking money from the state’s public-elections fund, to shift it to social services, and to accelerate a planned exemption on sales taxes on diapers and femine-hygience products from 2018 to this year.

Meanwhile, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities said that under the plan to raise the eligible mill rate for the motor vehicle property tax cap from 32 to 37 mills, dozens of communities would be shut out and may have to reopen budgets they have already set.

An elimination of some local payments in lieu of taxes would affect 13 communities including Stamford, which would lose more than $430,000.

The budget vote was the first of several pieces of legislation needed to trigger the budget on July 1. The second piece, approved unanimously in under 15 minutes, was an annual bill to allow the conveyance of public land.

The bill included a 2.1-acre parcel in Ridgefield owned by the state that would be leased to the town for new ball fields at the cost of a dollar per year.

In Greenwich, the Bruce Museum would be allowed to lease a .35-acre parcel from the state Department of Transportation for open space and public parking, under terms to be negotiated by the town.
Democrats said the budget — which would cut the second year of the two-year spending package passed last year by 4.4 percent — contains no new income, sales or business taxes. Republicans, however, charged that decreased aid to towns and cities will result in higher taxes to make up the difference at the local level.

One section of the budget would let towns and cities levy 5-percent local sales tax on top of a state admissions tax at entertainment venues, in some case increasing the cost of tickets by 15 percent. Some towns and cities would also be excluded from last year’s effort to cut property taxes on motor vehicles.

Ending a cycle

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, in an interview Thursday morning, recalled that during his budget address in early February, he warned that the state’s economic landscape was sharply changing and historic budgeting, with annual spending increases, had to be changed.

“What it actually does is build an expectation among advocates for bigger spending, to spend more,” Malloy said, talking in favor of the budget cuts planned by Democrats. “And it’s kind of a blind tool for that purpose, in as much as they don’t take into consideration how much money we’re putting into technology, or how much money we’re saving on a yearly basis due to lean processes that are ongoing.”
The biennial budget format has been lending itself to steady, incremental spending increases, but with the continual slide in tax revenue over the last year or more, it has become apparent that spending has to be reduced.

“It’s always going to be more expensive two years from now to do everything exactly the same way you’re doing it at a higher price,” Malloy said. “What we need to do is say ‘Give me an analysis that says how do we provide the same service at less money.’ That would be useful. I just think that current services became the enemy of good budgeting and good spending habits.”