Zawistowski Votes Against Incomplete Budget Fix

HARTFORD—A plan from majority party Democrats to adjust the 2017 fiscal year budget would cut local education funding while ignoring slumping state revenues, Rep. Tami Zawistowski said.

When the second year of the two-year state budget adopted last spring begins July 1, it will be out of balance by $930 million. Leaders of the legislature’s budget-writing Appropriations Committee rolled out their fix Wednesday, but the midterm plan (H.B. 5044) covered just $569 million of that deficit.

“This problem just isn’t going away, yet this document acts as if we didn’t know that state tax revenue is projected some $360 million less than expected,” Zawistowski said. “It was only a few days ago, while closing the current-year deficit, that one of this committee’s leaders talked about the ‘new fiscal reality’ in Connecticut, yet this plan reads as though it was created in an alternate universe where we’re actually going to see all that revenue they budgeted for last spring. Reality isn’t a word I’d use to describe this.”

If adopted through a full General Assembly vote, the budget plan approved Wednesday in a 33-24 committee vote would see the legislature elected in November to deal with the remaining shortfall. The plan underfunds the state’s debt service, a move that could threaten Connecticut’s credit rating.

“It’s kicking the can down the road, pure and simple,” said Zawistowski, who has joined House and Senate Republicans—and Gov. Dannel Malloy—in calling for structural budget changes.

The plan also cuts Education Cost Sharing funds the state provides to towns. It also counts on $239 million in state employee-related savings without providing details on how to achieve the goal.

“This ‘trust us, we’ll find these savings’ game is part of what’s driving our budget deficits,” Zawistowski said. “We need structural changes—not employee suggestion boxes.”
The biennium budget period after the next fiscal year is projected at $4.5 billion.