Gov. Dannel P. Malloy warned his department heads Tuesday he will ask lawmakers to consider emergency spending cuts in May if the administration cannot erase a small deficit in the current state budget — which closes on June 30 — over the next month. “I just ask you to take every step you can,” the […]

National clean-election advocates added their voices Monday to local critics of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposal to allow publicly financed candidates to accept unlimited dollars from corporate and other private interests if they are outspent. “It certainly betrays the spirit of the law,” Nick Nyhart, president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Public […]

State government’s recent victory in its long-running battle to collect sales taxes from a global publisher of children’s educational materials could bode well for its larger battle to collect taxes from online retailing giants. Though the case against a subsidiary of New York City-based Scholastic Inc. well pre-dates the statute enacted last year to force […]

Anti-poverty advocates say an extremely mild winter couldn’t undo all the damage from deep federal budget cuts to Connecticut’s heating assistance program. “In many ways this has been one of our most difficult years in trying to serve energy customers,” said Amos Smith, president of the Connecticut Association for Community Action. “I recognize this was […]

Democratic state legislators this week wedged themselves between a fuel pump and a fiscal hard place — and there may be no easy way out. Trying to outmaneuver Republicans on the sticky issue of rising gas prices, Democrats pledged to cap a wholesale fuel tax, announcing Wednesday it could be approved next week. But because […]

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration recognized shrinking tax revenues in its latest budget forecast Wednesday, yet remained the only entity still projecting that state government will wrap up the fiscal year in just over three months in the black. In a report filed Wednesday with the comptroller’s office, the governor’s budget agency did note that […]

Majority Democrats proposed a one-year cap Monday on the state’s escalating wholesale fuel tax — but set it to expire one day before one of the largest fuel tax increases in state history is set to kick in. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate pledged to consider extending the cap beyond June 2013, but […]

Connecticut’s public financing program for state elections has “adequate resources” to fund this year’s legislative campaigns, according to a new report released Friday from the state’s chief elections watchdogs. But the State Elections Enforcement Commission warned that due to fiscal raids, the Citizens’ Election Fund could come up short in 2014, when races for governor […]

A proposal to give public agencies greater discretion to meet in closed sessions with their attorneys has fallen into political limbo at the Capitol. The legislature’s Government Administration and Elections Committee, which originally raised the bill and scheduled a public hearing on the measure, suspended the latter and may not reschedule it in the face […]

Internet brokers who refer business to hotels and motels no longer would be spared from Connecticut’s 15 percent occupancy tax under a new bill raised by a legislative panel. And while Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s revenue commissioner and several legislators on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee said the measure is about tax fairness, opponents […]

Hartford — The good news is that Connecticut’s economic rebound is accelerating. The bad news, according to the University of Connecticut’s latest quarterly economic journal, is that the pace still remains slower than any recovery in recent history — and it will take several more years to undo the damage of the last recession. Connecticut […]

Democrats on the Appropriations Committee lined up Thursday behind Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposal to place more state expenditures outside Connecticut’s constitutional spending cap, while Republicans criticized the changes as evidence of deteriorating state finances. At a public hearing, Democrats said that the cap’s history is repeatedly marked by exceptions that prove this budget-regulating mechanism simply […]

Comptroller Kevin P. Lembo left a big question mark in the state’s new annual financial report, reflecting an overdue assessment of billions of dollars in promised long-term savings tied to union health care concessions ratified last summer. State auditors John Geragosian and Robert M. Ward declined to certify that portion of the Comprehensive Annual Financial […]

State government should offer a retirement plan to the increasing number of people whose companies don’t provide a pension or a 401(k) savings program, labor groups and other advocates this week told a legislative panel. The Labor and Public Employees Committee has raised a bill that would create a task force to study that concept […]

State Treasurer Denise L. Nappier and House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, have resumed their fight over whether the state has a cash flow problem indicative of financial distress — or if politicians are clashing over semantics. Nappier offered Thursday to meet with legislators to warn them about “misleading” statements from some lawmakers […]