Former state Rep. Jonathan Pelto doesn’t have any trouble standing out from the rest of the 2014 gubernatorial candidates. For Pelto, a $1.4 billion shortfall – more than four years after the last recession ended – typifies a broken fiscal system that threatens Connecticut’s schools, state workers’ pensions, and middle class families.
Money
Stories about Connecticut’s budget, the federal budget, jobs and employment, state investments and casinos.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
Deficit 2015: McKinney’s solution lies with ‘ignored’ ideas
This is Part One in a weekly series focusing on Connecticut’s five gubernatorial candidates and their respective plans for reinvigorating the state’s economy and closing a $1.4 billion budget deficit projected for after the election. Part One features an interview with Republican John P. McKinney.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Congressional gridlock could stall over 80 CT transportation projects
More than 80 Connecticut highway, bridge and rail projects are at risk of delay if Congress can’t resolve a partisan standoff over a new infrastructure funding bill by October, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy warned Thursday after meeting with U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Malloy hedges on expansion of paid sick days
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says fears over a ground-breaking state law mandating paid sick days were unrealized, but he demurred when asked Tuesday if he is ready to seek an expansion of a law that now has a limited reach.
Posted inEducation, Money
Despite one big miss, most CT teachers’ pensions were delivered
The state failed to deliver teacher pension funds over the past decade in just 15 of more than 7,800 cases involving deaths – a failure rate of less than one-fifth of 1 percent, according to an interim report filed Monday.
Posted inEducation, Money, Politics
UConn: State funding must grow to maintain faculty, financial aid gains
University of Connecticut officials adopted a new budget Wednesday that bolsters faculty and financial aid, but they warned that major growth in state aid will be needed in the near future to maintain those objectives.
Posted inEducation, Money
New UConn budget to add faculty, continue tuition and fee hikes
The University of Connecticut Board of Trustees is expected to adopt a new $1.2 billion budget Wednesday that adds 61 faculty positions and boosts student aid while increasing tuition and fees about 4 percent over the current academic year.
Posted inMoney
House votes to boost spending on Sikorsky ‘copters and F-35’s
Washington – In a boon to Connecticut –based defense contractors, the House on Friday voted overwhelmingly for a defense budget that would increase President Obama’s request for Sikorsky helicopters and for F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, whose engines are produced by Pratt & Whitney.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Most states faced plunging income tax receipts this April
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took a political blow this April when plunging income tax receipts nixed his plans for an election-year rebate. But according to a new report from a nationally recognized public-policy, think-tank, Connecticut officials had lots of company nationally dealing with tax deadline chaos.
Posted inMoney
CT jobless rate unchanged despite gains in May
Despite 5,800 jobs added to the Connecticut economy in May, the state’s unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.9 percent, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Connecticut legislators in 13th year without a raise
While nearly a fifth of the nation’s state legislatures increased their salaries last year, Connecticut’s General Assembly members are in the midst of their 13th year without a pay hike.
Posted inMoney
CT restores thousands of hours of expired comp time for parole officers
The state restored about 5,800 hours of compensatory time that should have expired to parole officers under an agreement reached with the workers’ union in 2013.
Posted inMoney, Politics
Neglected bridge makes deferred maintenance a losing bet
By making replacement of an 118-year-old rail bridge a second-term funding priority, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy took a gamble won by other governors, but not him. The odds of winning federal funding to fix the malfunctioning bridge are slim, which makes deferred maintenance — a quiet crisis plaguing the length of the Boston-Washington rail corridor — into an urgent election-year issue in Connecticut.
Posted inMoney, Politics
McKinney vs. Barnes: Apples & oranges, busway & bridges
Sen. John P. McKinney, a Republican candidate for governor, linked the state’s failure to maintain a Norwalk rail bridge Thursday to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s decision to greenlight construction of the Hartford to New Britain busway.
The governor’s secretary of the policy and management, Ben Barnes, said the Senate minority leader was comparing apples to oranges.
Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics
Malloy vetoes inadvertent ban on chocolate milk in schools
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy vetoed three more bills Thursday, including a measure that likely would have barred the sale of chocolate milk in Connecticut schools.
