This story has been updated.

With spending on pace to exceed Connecticut’s constitutional cap starting in July 2026, legislators may suspend their requirement to adopt a biennial budget and craft a plan covering only one year, House Speaker Matt Ritter announced Wednesday.

Talk of abandoning the two-year cycle — a planning tool enacted in 1991 to temper public frustration over the newly created state income tax — drew criticism from Gov. Ned Lamont, who said he was inclined to veto any single-year plan.

But Ritter said something is better than nothing.

“As a legislature, the worst and most dangerous thing you can do is leave without a budget of some kind,” Ritter said, referring to the June 4 mandatory deadline for the regular General Assembly and stalled budget negotiations with the Lamont administration.

The two sides largely have agreed on spending to cover the 2025-26 fiscal year, which starts in less than five weeks.

But for more than three decades, the legislature in odd-numbered years has adopted a biennial plan, covering both the soon-to-begin fiscal year and offering a first draft for the one after that. Legislators have an opportunity to amend the second half of the biennial plan during even-numbered years.

This approach is designed to encourage long-range fiscal planning and to help officials anticipate spending and revenue problems. Connecticut has followed this approach since the biennium stretching from July 1993 through June 1995.

But the spending cap and Connecticut’s other budget controls have become increasingly difficult to follow in recent years.

Ritter said the legislature’s Democratic majority wants to spend roughly $200 million more than the administration will accept in 2026-27. The legislature’s proposal also would push spending over the constitutional cap, which keeps most budget growth in line with household income and inflation, unless some compromise to legally exceed or otherwise circumvent that limit can be reached.

Slashing those funds would eliminate most spending growth planned for public colleges and universities, special education for K-12 schools, subsidized student meals and health care. “The [cut] sheet is tough,” Ritter added.

“We continue to have cordial conversations and negotiations with the governor’s office,” the speaker said. But he added that, with the session closing in one week, leaders must decide in the next few days whether to keep pursuing a two-year deal, and risk adopting no budget, or passing a one-year sure thing.

The legislature could call a special session. But with summer vacations and other scheduling challenges, there’s no guarantee that any deal would be passed before the new fiscal year starts July 1. If that happens, the lack of any budget could lead to delays in issuing aid to cities and towns.

Lamont told reporters Wednesday he doesn’t like the idea of abandoning the two-year budget cycle.

“I think that’s a mistake,” he said, adding that it helps municipalities and other groups that rely on state assistance with their own fiscal planning. “Mayors, superintendents and everybody wants a little bit of predictability.”

The governor also said he believes legislators have lost perspective. While spending on most programs hasn’t grown as fast as some of his fellow Democrats in the General Assembly would prefer, he said, it has largely risen during his six-year tenure.

“We’re not talking about cuts, we’re talking about how much we increase,” he said, adding “I just think we should sit down and try it again, rather than run out and say, ‘I give up, and let’s do a one-year budget.’”

When asked whether he would veto a single-year budget, the governor said, “I have to take a look at it, but I’m inclined to do that. You’ve got to see where the timing is on this.”

Republican legislative leaders also called for Connecticut to stick with biennial budgeting.

“This is about priorities,” said House Speaker Vincent J. Candelora of North Branford. “This is about choices. And some adult needs to get in that room and start making these decisions.”

Adopting a single-year plan would be “more than a ‘mistake,’ governor,” added Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield. “It’s a dereliction of duty.”

“We submitted a balanced budget to the legislature, what, back in early February,” Lamont said, adding that template should show lawmakers how to craft a plan that complies with state budget caps. “We’ve got a week to go. I think we ought to be able to figure it out.”

But legislative leaders counter that it’s not that simple, for several reasons.

First, state budget caps have become increasingly problematic.

Some large segments of the state budget, such as Medicaid, grow faster than either household income or inflation and largely are fixed. So, they tend to eat up a disproportionate share of new spending allowed each year under the cap system, leaving other programs to fight for fiscal scraps.

Second, state officials are particularly wary of committing to any long-range budget right now given the likelihood that Connecticut could lose hundreds of millions in annual aid from Washington based on cutting proposals pending before Congress.

“We all know that we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop in the fall,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.

Third, Lamont’s budget wasn’t as perfectly balanced as the governor suggested.

The administration and legislature both knew entering the legislative session in January that health care workers were poised to strike this spring at nursing homes and group homes for clients with developmental disabilities. Lamont recently reached a last-minute deal last week to boost Medicaid over the next few years — including about $140 million extra in 2026-27 — to avert a strike. 

But the governor didn’t propose any funds to cover a pay increase for nursing and group home workers in his February budget proposal.

In other words, the legislature is seeking to spend $200 million more in 2026-27 than Lamont will accept, but 70% of that involves an expense he chose not to cover in his own budget plan.

He did offer in recent negotiations to increase undefined savings targets, which would empower the administration to find offsetting cuts across a wide range of programs once the budget already is in force.

“The legislative branch is not backup singers,” Ritter added. “It is a co-equal branch of government, and it’s not going to just bend a knee because somebody says on a sheet of paper, ‘just make these cuts.’”