fiscal guardrails News and In-Depth Reporting

Lamont assures CBIA that CT’s spending cap is ‘sacrosanct’

Gov. Ned Lamont told business leaders he won’t touch the spending cap, but left room for debate on other fiscal guardrails.

Both supporters of CT’s ‘fiscal guardrails’ and reform advocates agree on one thing: They want the debate to play out in the light of day.

The ‘guardrails’ require that legislators save $2.5B in the next biennial budget, and the revenues they can spend grew by only around $620M.

CT expects to set aside $1.2 billion to pay down pension debt, but projects nearly $400 million in General Fund cost overruns.

CT’s fiscal controls, while impossible to ignore, don’t translate well to the campaign trail. So how are politicians framing the discussion?

The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services has made limited hiring progress and the vacancies are dangerous, union members say.

For more than 30 years, one of the single-largest factors shaping CT’s budget has been its spending cap. Here’s what to know about it.

As the CT government piled up cash, many core services have slipped or remain in the dire straits they faced before the boom times.