Posted inEducation, Energy & Environment, Health, Justice, Money, Politics, Transportation

CT’s maxed-out credit card takes its toll on many projects

The General Assembly is expected to vote before it adjourns May 4 on a plan that would cancel more than $1.1 billion in financing earmarked for an enormous array of purposes in both the public and private sectors, including renovating the leaking, flaking dome of UConn’s Gampel Pavilion.

Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics, Transportation

GOP budget plan: Slash agency budgets, cut bonding drastically

Leaders insist their blueprint would close massive future deficits without tax hikes. To do that, though, the GOP minorities in the House and Senate would dilute the two big initiatives Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the Democratic majority launched last June: a 30-year investment in transportation and a plan to share sales tax receipts with cities and towns.

Posted inMoney, Politics, Transportation

A displeased Malloy to push back with a new budget of his own

After watching his fellow Democrats in the legislature unveil a budget that undermined — or even rejected — some of his biggest objectives, including the need to avoid tax hikes, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy will take an unconventional step next week to refocus his party. The governor, who traditionally begins the annual fiscal debate in early February with his own spending and revenue plan, will submit a second budget next week.

Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics, Transportation

Budget plan offers painful cuts but remains out of balance

Updated at 5:18 p.m.
The legislature’s Appropriations Committee adopted a new $19.9 billion budget plan Wednesday, that Democratic leaders insisted restores fairness to a fiscal system that has cut too heavily from social services, health care and education – even though the overall plan is out of balance. Republicans pronounced it a failure.

Posted inEducation, Health, Justice, Money, Politics, Transportation

A minefield of concerns complicates laying off state workers

Though all indications are that many state employees will receive pink slips soon, several factors make it difficult for Connecticut to downsize its workforce. And those same factors and others make it all-but-impossible to close the major budget deficits projected for the next few years with layoffs alone.

Posted inEducation, Health, Money, Politics, Transportation

Struggle to balance current budget could help with future deficits

While legislators and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy scramble to close yet another hole in the current state budget, the exercise could help them solve a much larger problem. Depending on how they solve this fiscal year’s $220 million deficit — a task lawmakers have pledged to complete Tuesday — the $900 million hole built into 2016-17 finances could be whittled down by nearly one-quarter.

Posted inPolitics, Transportation

Decision on widening I-95 key step in transportation master plan

State transportation officials want to widen I-95 and introduce congestion or time-of-day tolling on it, to both reduce congestion and raise revenue for Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s massive 30-year transportation plan. But there’s plenty of opposition to the widening, and if it can’t be resolved, the increasingly daunting challenge of funding the program could become that much more difficult.

Posted inPolitics, Transportation

Malloy calls ‘lockbox’ vote a milestone, not a setback

What do you say when your pitch for a constitutional amendment protecting transportation revenue is strongly endorsed by the General Assembly, just not by the three-fourths margin necessary to place it before the voters in 2016? “This is a victory,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Wednesday. “It’s not a hundred-percent victory, but it’s a victory.”