Advocates for social services, labor and municipalities appealed Wednesday for legislators and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to consider higher income taxes on the wealthy, tolls, a sales tax expansion and other revenue hikes to avert deep budget cuts.
Money
Stories about Connecticut’s budget, the federal budget, jobs and employment, state investments and casinos.
Posted inEducation, Money
House Democrats offer modest town aid shift in new budget
Majority House Democrats unveiled a new budget Wednesday that matches the town aid proposed by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy while redistributing education funds more modestly from wealthy and middle-income towns and into poorer communities.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Legislators to propose new budget plans to break gridlock
With the state budget standoff nearing two months, Democrats and Republican legislative leaders announced plans Tuesday to unveil revised budget proposals soon.
Posted inEducation, Money
Poorest districts spared some ed funding cuts, still to be hit hard by others
In the absence of a state budget, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has spared Connecticut’s most impoverished communities from losing their largest education grants, but there are plenty of other lesser grants these towns rely on that will be decimated or scaled back under his executive orders.
Posted inMoney
It’s official: CT finances in deficit after seven weeks with no budget
Just over seven weeks into the new fiscal year without an approved budget, state finances — not surprisingly — are running $94 million in deficit, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration reported Monday.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
Fasano asks AG for opinion on Malloy’s shift in town aid
Senate Republican leader Len Fasano has asked Attorney General George Jepsen to issue an opinion on the legality of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s executive order dramatically realigning municipal aid in the absence of a new state budget.
Posted inMoney
Many states, like CT, have low budget reserves, income growth
While Connecticut is one of just two states still lacking a budget, it has plenty of company involving two of the key factors that complicate its fiscal challenges. But it ranks close to the bottom in both: the health of its rainy day fund and income growth.
Posted inEducation, Money
State school aid: How would your town fare under Malloy’s plan?
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Friday released a plan to eliminate Education Cost Sharing funding for 85 school districts and reduce funding for another 54 if no state budget is adopted before the first week of October. Grants to the 30 lowest-performing school systems would remain unchanged.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
Malloy would reduce, dramatically redistribute school aid in October
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy would reduce grants to school districts by 28 percent in October — if no state budget has been adopted — and would dramatically shift funding away from wealthy and middle-income communities and into poorer ones.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Sales tax hike seems an ‘inevitability,’ but questions remain
Connecticut’s top state senator said Wednesday he believes moderate Democrats are “growing increasingly comfortable” with a sales tax increase that could ease pressure to slash municipal aid and help break an impasse that has left the state without a budget.
Posted inMoney
CT job totals slip by 600 in July
Connecticut lost 600 jobs in July while the state’s unemployment rate remained stable at 5 percent, the Department of Labor reported Thursday.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
Speaker: Mid-September vote is last chance to avert budget disaster for towns
As municipalities brace for a massive hit in state assistance this fall, absent a new budget, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz said Wednesday his chamber may vote on a fiscal plan next month — even if it acts alone.
Posted inEducation, Money
State to continue funding pre-K expansion despite lack of budget
With no state budget in place for the current fiscal year – and the school year quickly approaching – uncertainty had surrounded whether the state would provide the money it promised district leaders when they expanded or opened new preschool classrooms over the last two school years.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
The state of CT’s cities and towns in charts
State aid to municipalities largely has been spared cuts over the last decade – and has even been increased in some years – even though the state has regularly faced budget deficits. Now it’s time for some municipalities to share in the pain, the Malloy administration maintains. As the debate rages, here, in graphical form, are some key indicators of the fiscal condition of the state’s 169 cities and towns and how they are spending their money.
Posted inMoney
With municipal aid on chopping block, a cordial chat
Evidently resigned to a shrinking pool of state aid, leaders of two municipal associations pressed Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Friday about granting Connecticut’s cities and town flexibility in dealing with public employees to achieve off-setting efficiencies, long a politically fraught topic at the State Capitol.