Gov. Malloy offers scaled back budget amid revenue slump

Wednesday, Governor Dannel Malloy will address the legislature in his 2016 State of the State.

Darien will receive $336,589.86 in continued state road improvement aid this year, according to a press release from Gov. Dannel Malloy’s office issued this week.

Malloy unveiled a proposed $19.8 billion budget that pares $569 million in spending, which he blamed on lower-than-expected revenues and an “inability” over past decades to make the changes and investments needed to move the state’s economy forward.

As lawmakers consider changes to the second year of the two-year $40 billion budget, funding for cities and towns will likely come up.

In remarks to the state House of Representatives, House Speaker Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, said Connecticut’s difficulties are the product of the state’s slow recovery from the Great Recession and ensuing economic downturn.

“We live in changing times”, he said in his address to the General Assembly. Barnes noted in his presentation that employment growth from 2011 to 2015 was roughly the same as it was between 2004 and 2008. “And I think we’re going to be very reluctant to do anything that in any way permanently shifts the balance of power, because the General Assembly had to fight an extraordinary battle”.

Governor Malloy alluded to changing the way the Connecticut spends taxpayer dollars during an exclusive meeting with NBC Connecticut.

“Now, we’ve abrogated our responsibility under the governor’s plan”, Fasano said.

The Democrat said he expects the state’s workforce will be reduced by more than 1,000 employees, either through attrition “or other means”. “This governor and this Democratic majority gave us the two largest tax increases in Connecticut’s history, and they said with these increases we’ll be out of the hole”.

The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has already launched a statewide media campaign to highlight how local services are hurt by reductions in state aid, in hopes of fending off budget cuts. In the SEBAC release, he called on Connecticut’s legislators to raise taxes on high earners to alleviate income inequality and relieve working-class residents of their high tax burden.

Mr. Malloy, whose plan would cut spending by $570 million, said he wasn’t proposing to take away the Legislature’s power to set spending limits. Those negotiations, he said, will be based on “what we can afford, not what we previously spent”. He said the administration doesn’t have a specific estimate on the exact number but could be in the several thousand range.