By Keith M. Phaneuf

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy today reaffirmed his opposition to the new state budget, arguing it would raid the pension funds, decimate higher education and leave the City of Hartford vulnerable to fiscal insolvency.

And while the Democratic governor urged all sides to compromise — and said he probably would have to accept some GOP proposals he opposes — Malloy also said he would not accept a plan to scale back scheduled payments into the state employees’ pension fund.

“This is serious hard work to put the state back in balance with respect to its unfunded, long-term obligations,” Malloy told reporters. “And what do we get? We get an invitation to make it worse.”

That “invitation,” according to the governor, was included in the two-year budget that the Senate and House approved on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

By Keith M. Phaneuf

Republican legislators sent their first state budget proposal to the governor’s desk in decades early today, capping a strange day that didn’t move Connecticut any closer to a new fiscal plan, but raised new questions about the balance of power at the Capitol.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy already had pledged to veto the GOP budget hours before it cleared the House by a 77-73 vote shortly before 3:15 a.m.

Meanwhile, leaders from both parties left the Capitol resigned to resume bipartisan talks in hopes of reaching a deal before a series of fiscal calamities strike in two weeks.

House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, said Republican caucuses that have felt overlooked in too many budget debates in recent history, have a key role to play in crafting that final agreement.

By Keith M. Phaneuf and Mark Pazniokas

Connecticut’s state budget grew exponentially more complicated today as three moderate Senate Democrats bolted their caucus and teamed with 18 Republicans to pass a GOP budget plan that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has vowed to veto as unbalanced and gimmick-ridden.

Not only did the vote derail what Democrats saw in their best chance in months to end the budget impasse, but it raised questions about whether Democrats still have a working majority in the upper chamber. A chastened Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said, “That remains to be seen.”

With the Senate evenly divided, Democrats’ only edge has been ability of the presiding officer, Democratic Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, to break 18-18 votes in favor of the Democrats. Today, that advantage failed in the stunning defection of Democrats Paul Doyle of Wethersfield, Gayle Slossberg of Milford and Joan Hartley of Waterbury.

Bolstered by the defections, the Senate voted 21-15 to adopt the Republican plan, which now heads to the House of Representatives, where House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, is unlikely to place it before the House for a vote.

By Keith M. Phaneuf

Sputtering bipartisan state budget talks, which hadn’t produced any unified plan over the past four months, appeared to have broken down for good — around the same issues that have plagued them in recent years.

Republican legislative leaders said today that their Democratic counterparts effectively ended any bipartisan talks by meeting Sunday with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy — a meeting to which the GOP wasn’t invited.

But Democratic leaders have questioned openly for months whether Republicans ever would support the hard choices needed to close major deficits in the next two-year budget. And the GOP had sharp criticism for the compromise proposal Malloy, a Democrat, unveiled on Friday.

“If you don’t invite somebody to a room to have negotiations, you can’t have negotiations,” Senate Republican leader Len Fasano of North Haven said during a mid-day press conference. “It seems to both of us they’re not interested in having those conversations anymore.”