Failing to reach a deal, CT Dems consider passing one-year budget; Lamont calls it ‘a mistake'

Yahoo

a day ago

For decades, state legislators have passed two-year budgets in order to avoid haphazard, seat-of-the-pants, one-year changes.
But failing this week to agree on a spending plan, some Democrats are suddenly considering switching to a one-year budget. They are racing to craft their plan with only one week left before the current legislative session adjourns on June 4, but Gov. Ned Lamont has raised strong objections to breaking the long tradition of two-year budgets that are designed to force lawmakers to look ahead at the state's fiscal outlook.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Hartford Democrat, said lawmakers are running out of options as they round up the necessary votes for the $27 billion state budget for the new fiscal year that starts on July 1.
'As a legislature, the worst and most dangerous thing you can do is leave without a budget of some kind,' Ritter told reporters Wednesday. 'Your leverage is gone. Members are away. It gets hard to find the [dates for] special sessions. The days turn into weeks, and you get to July 1, and your municipalities and your nonprofits and others are at the whim of whatever the governor's office wants to do. … Every day that goes by, the power accumulates in the executive branch.'
The immediate problem, Ritter says, is that both the legislature and the governor failed this year to set aside money for a recently settled three-year contract for unionized nursing home workers in the District 1199 union who had threatened to go on strike. While all sides knew that the contracts remained unsettled, they never set aside $140 million to pay the workers for the second year of the two-year budget. As such, the second year would not be balanced.
'A one-year budget … is very much in play,' said Ritter, who has served in the legislature for 15 years. 'That might be the best option. Our first-year budget is under the [spending] cap. It is in balance. The governor has blessed year one. The disagreement is year two.'
The situation is further complicated by the so-called guardrails and the state's spending cap. Changing the so-called volatility cap to allow more spending requires a three-fifths vote, which is 91 votes in the 151-member House. Democrats hold the majority over Republicans by 102 to 49.
'This is the first time in my experience that you need 91 votes to pass the budget, to raise the volatility threshold,' Ritter said.
But Lamont summoned reporters to his office Wednesday afternoon to denounce Ritter's idea, saying that there is still time in the final week to reach a deal on a two-year, $55.5 billion budget. The clash, he said, is not generally over cuts but instead on the size of the projected increases.
'I just think we should sit down and try it again rather than run out and say, 'I give up and let's do a one-year budget,' ' Lamont told reporters, saying he is willing to work through the weekend to reach a deal. 'There are no cuts. We're arguing about how much we increase funding.'
While he did not include the nursing home money in his budget proposal in early February, Lamont said it was later added in because there were reductions, known as 'lapses,' in other accounts throughout the budget.
Asked by a reporter if he would veto a one-year budget, Lamont responded, 'I'm inclined to do that.'
Lamont had earlier described the Democratic one-year idea as 'a mistake.' When told of Lamont's objections, Ritter said, 'The executive branch wants a biennium budget, and they want it kind of on their terms. That's typical of a governor. … It's not what the legislature wants to do.'
If lawmakers pass a one-year spending plan, they could return to the Capitol in Hartford in September to plug any holes left by expected cuts from President Trump's administration as the federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.
While Ritter mentioned that a one-year budget had not been enacted in Connecticut since 1979 or 1980, multiple insiders said that the two-year budget tradition started as a major financial reform after the state income tax was enacted under Gov. Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. in 1991.
Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield said Lamont needs to push back even harder against his fellow Democrats.
'It's more than a 'mistake', governor,' Harding said. 'It's a dereliction of duty. Unfortunately, Gov. Lamont has already folded like a lawn chair to his fellow Democrats after agreeing to blow by the once-'sacrosanct' state spending cap last week. Why wouldn't Democrats assume you will again fold like a lawn chair on this issue as well?'
Harding added, 'Gov. Lamont: There is less than a week left in the legislative session. We have no budget. No tax cuts. No spending cap. We have passed nothing to lower energy costs. Get your mojo back, Gov. Lamont. You are being pushed around by majority Democrats. Threaten some vetoes. Stop showing weakness and do something.'
State Rep. Tammy Nuccio, the ranking House Republican on the budget committee, told The Courant that she is stunned that the Democrats are having trouble passing a two-year budget when they have super-majorities in both chambers of the legislature and flush fiscal coffers from constant budget surpluses in recent years.
'I think it's a farce,' Nuccio of the one-year plan.
She added, 'The priority right now should be protecting Medicaid. It should be, in my opinion, electric rates. It should be sustainability over the two years. We obviously have issues for overtime' in prisons and the state police.
Nuccio and fellow Republicans say the state could save $116 million over two years by eliminating health care for undocumented immigrants, but some Democrats have said that coverage is a key priority.
With a full week left until adjournment, the legislature is known for acting quickly when necessary and cutting deals at the last minute as they race toward midnight on June 4.
Ritter said that House Democrats have not issued any take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums and are open to negotiations.
'It's not our final offer,' Ritter said.
He added that House Democrats are not giving up or caving in.
'The legislative branch is not back-up singers. It is a co-equal branch of government. And it's not going to just bend a knee because somebody says on a sheet of paper, just make these cuts and we're going to go home. There are opinions in there, passionate opinions in there. And we have the tough job of threading that needle, and the needle right now, I believe, is a one-year budget.'
Christopher Keating can be reached at [e-mail]