🔒Amid ‘end’ to fiscal crisis, Comptroller Scanlon says CT can make state budget’s fiscal guardrails more ‘adaptive’

Sean Scanlon admits his career aspirations never included being state comptroller.

“Nobody dreams of running for comptroller,” Scanlon said during a recent interview with the Hartford Business Journal. “At 16, that wasn’t my goal.”

He initially had other aspirations, which included singing in a self-described “boy band” with his Guilford High School pal Nick Fradiani, who went on to win the hit TV show “American Idol” in 2015.

While a music career didn’t materialize, Scanlon’s career goals changed dramatically, he says, as a high school junior.

“I did a book report about Bobby Kennedy,” he said. “I had no interest at all in politics, but for whatever reason, this book just completely took me by storm.”

That surprised him, he added, because his parents weren’t interested in politics.

“My dad was a cop, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and then my folks split when I was 6,” he said. “I don’t ever remember talking about politics as a kid. I don’t think my parents even really voted. They were not really engaged in politics. “

Regardless, Scanlon had caught the politics bug.

His political path — from a teenager working part-time at Subway, to working on a local senator’s election campaign, to being elected to the state House in 2014 and then comptroller in 2022 — not only reflects his admiration for Robert F. Kennedy Sr., but also his experiences while being raised by a single mom.

“The issue that really animated me into politics, to think about actually running for office, was health care,” said Scanlon, who is a Democrat.

That remains among his strongest motivations as comptroller.

The state's CFO

You might wonder what health care has to do with being state comptroller, who fundamentally is the state’s chief financial officer, paying the bills and keeping the books.

“I’m doing all those traditional functions, but I’m also in charge of benefit procurement for (state) employees,” Scanlon said. “I’m the one who has the honor of running this 260,000-person healthcare plan. It’s the largest plan in the state.”

There’s some irony in that, because his mother, Kathy, struggled to provide health insurance for him as a child.

“When my folks split up, … my mom did not have insurance because she didn’t have a job,” Scanlon said. “So, she ended up starting her own small business, but didn’t have insurance through her company.”

Just three months after taking office in January 2023, he formed the Comptroller’s Healthcare Cabinet, a working group of industry professionals and others who offer recommendations for legislation and policy.

His end goal, he said, is to make sure “every Connecticut resident has access to the health care they deserve.”

Scanlon, as a state lawmaker, was a proponent of creating a public health insurance option in Connecticut, but that legislation was batted down several times in the face of intense opposition from the insurance industry and concerns about the cost impact on the state budget.

Scanlon said previous versions of the public option proposal “included stop-loss insurance, which would ensure taxpayers aren’t on the hook if claims exceed premiums for the nonprofits or small businesses in the plan.”

He said he remains supportive of the concept, but no bill to create a public option was introduced this session.

Health care, though, is only part of his role.

Scanlon said being one of only six statewide elected officials in the state, and Connecticut’s top “financial guy,” gives him a bully pulpit to weigh in on a wide range of issues, whether it’s health care, child care, energy costs or housing, among others.

“All these things I view are in my lane,” he said.

Fiscal guardrails

Scanlon — a Boston College alum who worked for then-congressman and now U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy early in his career — first ran for office in 2014, winning an election to represent the state’s 98th House District, which serves Guilford and Branford.

At 27, he was the youngest member of the General Assembly, but his dream of helping people was quickly quashed. When he told Democratic party leaders that he had made promises to his constituents, they told him to forget them.

The state was in another fiscal crisis.

In fiscal years 2014-15 and 2015-16, the state faced consecutive budget deficits and its rainy day fund had dwindled to $235.6 million, or 1.3% of annual operating costs.

“When I got elected to the legislature, we were in the midst of a permanent fiscal crisis, and the last 10 years have been a story of us getting out of that crisis,” Scanlon said.

In 2017, faced with yet another budget deficit, the legislature approved a more strict spending cap, an annual bonding limit and other measures now known as the state’s “fiscal guardrails.”

The guardrails have helped change Connecticut’s fiscal trajectory. The state has recorded six straight years of surpluses, paid down billions of dollars in long-term pension liabilities and recapitalized its rainy day fund with over $4 billion.

“The guardrails were created in 2017 to end that fiscal crisis,” Scanlon said. “In 2025, that crisis has ended.”

Today, Scanlon said he still supports the guardrails, but believes there is an opportunity to make them more “adaptive.”

“If the last 10 years were about ending the crisis,” Scanlon said, “the next 10 years have to be about growing Connecticut for the first time in a long time and addressing the new crisis, which in my mind is the affordability crisis — health care, child care, housing and energy, which are all costing too much for people in the state.”

He supports saving and paying down debt, but also freeing up “a little bit of money to address the things that are now hurting people more than our fiscal situation. And that’s the balance that I think we need to find going forward.”

Scanlon says the state’s improved fiscal condition has freed up more money for the budget.

For the coming fiscal year, the state has $1 billion more to spend under the cap. It also has another $750 million available that doesn’t “have to be used for debt service,” he said.

“I tell people all the time, the most progressive thing we can do is be fiscally responsible,” he said. “And people’s heads explode when I say that.”

Universal pre-K

The heads of critics of Gov. Ned Lamont’s $55.2 billion biennial budget proposal may not have exploded, but they have raised loud concerns.

That includes complaints over Lamont’s plan to loosen one of the state’s fiscal guardrails — the volatility cap — in order to spend $300 million for a universal pre-K program.

The volatility cap prohibits the legislature from spending an average of $1.4 billion in annual income and business tax receipts because those tax revenues fluctuate greatly from year to year. The governor’s plan frees up $300 million from that $1.4 billion cap.

Industry groups, including the Connecticut Business & Industry Association and National Federation of Independent Business, have opposed attempts to loosen the guardrails.

Scanlon said he supports Lamont’s plan because the volatility cap was calculated based on just one year.

“That was a mistake because that turned out to be a very unrepresentative year of volatility,” he said. “When you do a five- or 10-year average, there’s about $300 million more that is over-collected by the volatility cap.”

More importantly, Scanlon said universal pre-K will help address the high costs of child care in the state.

Scanlon, who is paid more than $189,000 a year, said he and his wife Meghan, who is a nonprofit executive, pay over $3,000 a month to send their two children to day care, “and one of them doesn’t even go full-time. … Being raised by a single mom, I have no idea how people in my mom’s shoes could afford to do this right now.”

The governor’s plan, he added, will benefit the workforce and could attract couples and families to live and work in the state.