A plan was put in place that attempts to tackle Connecticut’s current $500 million deficit, with about two-and-a-half months left in a fiscal year that’s been rocked by plummeting state revenues, The Associated Press reports.
Just minutes after the deficit-cutting bill passed the Senate — in a rare unanimous vote on a budgetary matter — Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed it into law.
Now lawmakers must turn their attention to the fiscal year that begins July 1, which is estimated to be about $700 million in the red. Legislators had passed the two-year, $37.6 billion budget last September.
“It is not the end of our fiscal challenges as we pass this bill, but it is a milestone,” said Senate President Donald Williams, D-Brooklyn. The Democratic-controlled General Assembly and Rell, a Republican, have been at odds for longer than a year over how best to handle Connecticut’s budget woes.
To cover this year’s deficit, lawmakers and the governor are postponing a $100 million payment to the state employee retirement fund, counting on additional federal revenues, using nearly $239 million originally allocated from the state’s Rainy Day fund for next year, siphoning nearly $97 million from various accounts and funds, and making nearly $90 million in spending cuts.
