OPINION: Budget Will Move Connecticut Forward

A few months ago the regular session of the general assembly ended on Wednesday, June 7, then the fiscal year ended on June 30.  Now, we’re more than 78 days past the end of the session and last weekend the legislature finally passed a bi-partisan budget to move our state forward and confidently into the next biennium.

Early Saturday morning, five Democrat legislators joined 72 Republicans and voted to approve a budget that holds municipalities harmless without imposing brutal tax increases on everything from cell phones to non-prescription drugs.  The Republican plan became bi-partisan when three State Senators and those 5 Democrat Representatives signed on in support.

Of course, this isn’t the narrative majority-party Democrats want to push and their feeble attempts at spinning this historic vote are falling flat. The vote was historic considering there hasn’t been a Republican-led budget approved in more than two decades.  Still, we – and eight Democrats – believe the budget presented is the best of all the options and will help Connecticut move forward in a positive way despite the uncertainty of our current fiscal situation.

The bi-partisan budget will fully fund, or increase aid, for education, and fund transportation and vital social services that Connecticut’s most needy residents rely on.  This budget funds programs for those with intellectual disabilities and does so without raising taxes of more than a billion and a half dollars like other proposed budgets would.

Still, Governor Malloy has repeatedly said he will veto this budget and send the legislature back to the drawing board to craft yet another plan he will approve. The same man who has said the governor’s job is to work with the legislature to move our state forward has promised – before reading – to veto a bi-partisan plan essentially because it’s not the plan he crafted, or the plan he and Democrats crafted behind closed doors.

For too many years Connecticut has suffered under failed tax and spend policies that have led to the two largest tax increases in state history and another incredible deficit of more than $3.5 billion.  The budget passed last weekend is a compromise on many levels, and while not perfect, represents a dynamic and positive change moving forward.

The day before the vote – a day when Democrats couldn’t even muster enough support to pass their own plan through their caucus because of massive and crippling tax and fee increases – Speaker Aresimowicz and Majority-leader Looney proclaimed the state’s dire need for a budget and that delay would cause undue harm to Connecticut’s cities and towns as the governor’s executive order goes into effect on October 1. We now have a bi-partisan budget but all of the sudden it’s not good enough so we must begin again.  I ask, if the deadline was so dire why did they wait months to produce a plan and why were they unable to garner enough support among their own members to support it?

Connecticut residents are sick of the same old approach to deficits and they’re begging our elected officials to work together and provide relief. This plan provides tax relief without devastating services and programs or wildly placing teacher pension obligation on the individual municipalities.  It’s time to reject the failed policies of past decades and move forward with a more fiscally responsible approach.

I urge you to contact Governor Malloy and Democrat legislators and tell them to support the bi-partisan plan.  Connecticut’s future depends on it.