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Track the budget: Taxes and fees

  • Money
  • by Arielle Levin Becker, Keith M. Phaneuf, Jan Ellen Spiegel and Mackenzie Rigg
  • April 16, 2015
  • View as "Clean Read" "Exit Clean Read"

The Mirror’s budget tracking tool is designed to show how the governor and legislators built a spending and tax plan for the upcoming two fiscal years, while dealing with projected deficits of more than $1 billion. There were proposals to cut in programs in health care, social services, municipal aid, public safety, arts and culture, job training programs, libraries and prisons — and to raise income, corporation and other taxes.

The budget-writing process

The state budget comes together through a three-step process: The governor proposes a budget, legislators issue their own plan, and then the administration and legislators negotiate a final deal.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed his budget in February, aiming to close a projected deficit of $1.3 billion through both spending cuts and tax increases. Republicans — who hold the minority in both chambers of the General Assembly — issued their own proposal April 24. The Appropriations Committee — which is controlled by Democrats — released its spending plan three days later.

And members of the Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee — also controlled by Democrats — released their revenue proposal April 29.

The House and Senate approved the budget June 3, but made adjustments to it during a June 29 special session. Malloy signed the budget and adjustments June 30.

How to use this tool

Below, you’ll find a list of the significant proposed cuts and tax increases in each proposal and the cuts and tax hikes that made it into the final budget. You can click on specific items to see details, and compare how each item would fare under each proposal and in the final budget.

We’re still gathering information on funding levels for some items in the final budget, so you’ll see some blank spaces. We’ll fill those in as soon as we can.

The big picture

The third tab in the chart shows you some key details: The size of the total budget and any fine print. For example, Malloy’s proposal exceeds the state’s spending cap, while the GOP proposal relies on significant labor savings that could require getting state employee unions to agree to concessions or large numbers of layoffs.

The Appropriations Committee’s proposal, meanwhile, comes in at $514 million higher than the governor’s plan and relies on a radical new interpretation of the state’s spending cap. The legislature’s Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee’s plan calls for $1.8 billion in additional taxes over the next two years.

And the final budget raises taxes by nearly $2 billion over two years.



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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arielle Levin Becker Arielle Levin Becker covers health care for The Connecticut Mirror. She previously worked for The Hartford Courant, most recently as its health reporter, and has also covered small towns, courts and education in Connecticut and New Jersey. She was a finalist in 2009 for the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists and a recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the National Health Journalism Fellowship. She is a graduate of Yale University.

Keith M. Phaneuf A winner of numerous journalism awards, Keith Phaneuf has been CT Mirror’s state finances reporter since it launched in 2010. The former State Capitol bureau chief for The Journal Inquirer of Manchester, Keith has spent most of 31 years as a reporter specializing in state government finances, analyzing such topics as income tax equity, waste in government and the complex funding systems behind Connecticut’s transportation and social services networks. A former contributing writer to The New York Times, Keith is a graduate of and a former journalism instructor at the University of Connecticut.

Jan Ellen Spiegel Jan has won awards for her reporting on energy, environment and food and agriculture. In 2013 she was the recipient of a Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT on energy and climate. She is a former editor at The Hartford Courant, where she handled national politics including coverage of the controversial 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. As a freelance reporter, her stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere. She was an editor at the Gazette in Colorado Springs and spent more than 20 years as a TV and radio producer at CBS News and CNN in New York and in the Boston broadcast market. She graduated from the University of Michigan and attended Boston University’s graduate film program.

Mackenzie Rigg

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