In The Loop – February 3, 2023

Next Wednesday, Feb 8th the whole tribe at the state capitol will be convening to hear the Governor announce during a joint session of the general assembly his complete vision for Connecticut for the next two years through the use of numbers – and there will be a lot of them! The budget process in CT is pretty straightforward – every two years the governor proposes his ideas and recommendations and the legislature can accept it as is (which doesn’t happen very often) or they can take what they like and dismantle what they don’t like. Or, they can overhaul the entire framework and substitute their vision. During the last two years of former Governor Dan Malloy’s administration, the legislature picked the latter option and Democrats joined forces with the Republican caucus and crafted a document that at the time was historical for not only the process it took to get it approved, but for some of the items that were transformed to curb the financial disaster that CT seemed to face year after year. They put in place some significant safeguards which are paying dividends now. These safeguards include paying down the state employee retirement debt, introducing a tighter calculation for saving surplus money in the state’s rainy day fund, and also assisting with a more structured methodology of predicting the “out years” impact on the 2-year budget before they approve and send it to the governor…. KEEP READING.