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.
This all comes one day after the slim Democratic majority in the House of Representatives could not muster enough support for a compromise budget crafted by Malloy and Democratic legislative leaders.
The Republican plan relied on no tax hikes to close projected deficits totaling $3.5 billion across this fiscal year and next combined. Doyle called the vote the most difficult of his career.
In a likely harbinger of the difficult times ahead, Looney and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said they were ambushed, noting that the dissenters had told them they were uncertain of their intentions, yet all had prepared remarks explaining their votes.
The three moderates rejected the plan crafted by Democratic leaders and the governor, arguing that tax and fee hikes built into it — worth $684 million this fiscal year and $1.53 billion across the next two combined — simply are too much, especially given recent history.
The legislature adopted tax hikes worth more than $1.8 billion per year in 2011, and a second package worth more than $650 million per year in 2015.
“I’ve been saying for a long time now that I’m worried about the future,” Slossberg said. “Yet here we are again looking down the same path.”
She briefly buried her face in her hands after finishing her remarks and taking her seat.
“I believe our state is living beyond its means. Our future budget picture is very bleak,” Doyle said. “We need to try to improve our economy for the state of Connecticut. How do we get there? It’s my opinion we get there with a bipartisan budget.”
Hartley added she fears state finances and Connecticut’s economy simply cannot survive at this pace. “I am very, very concerned we will not be able to sustain the program upon which this is built,” she said. “Get the job done. This is no time for partisan politics.”
But the Republican budget has faced its fair share of criticism.
It incorporates savings from the concessions deal unions and Malloy struck earlier this year, as does the compromise plan reached by the governor and Democratic leaders.
But while that concessions deal also locks the state employees’ benefits package into place through 2027, Republicans said Connecticut can save even more money now by limiting the pension benefits offered after that date.
Those new limits would reduce required pension payments by $119 million this fiscal year and by $151 million in 2018-19.
Many Democratic leaders, the governor and union leaders have questioned whether the state can make these changes unilaterally or whether that would violate collective bargaining rules.
Some Democrats also object to the Republican budget because it reduces income tax credits for the working poor far more than the Democratic compromise plan does.
Looney said the vote only “will prolong this contest which is so damaging. It will drag on much longer.”
Connecticut has gone 11 weeks into the new fiscal year without an adopted budget. Absent a budget, Malloy has said he has no choice but to reduce major general government and education grants to cities and towns on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.
That’s because surging debt and retirement benefit costs, which are fixed by contract, must be paid, and also because state income tax receipts have faced significant decline this calendar year for the first time since 2009.
But Senate Republican leader Len Fasano of North Haven urged legislators to consider the Republican alternative. “We have to change who we are as a state,” he said. “We have to change our philosophy.”
