For the third time since November, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has announced budget rescissions to the current fiscal year’s budget.
The state entities hit hardest by the $13 million in cuts announced Tuesday are The Office of Early Childhood ($5.8 million), UConn and UConn Health ($3 million) and the Board of Regents for Higher Education ($1.5 million).
The cuts closely follow steep increases in budget-deficit projects this month from both the Office of Policy Management and the Office of Fiscal Analysis. Comptroller Kevin Lembo on Tuesday projected the deficit somewhere in the middle of OPM and OFA, at $172.8 million.
Lembo warned that the projection is just shy of one percent of total appropriations, which means it’s nearly at the threshold requiring deficit mitigation.
He recommended that Malloy and the legislature start a deficit-mitigation plan immediately.
OPM Secretary Benjamin Barnes released a statement Tuesday afternoon indicating that such planning would come during budget negotiations at the end of the legislative session. Barnes noted that Lembo’s calculations don’t account for this week’s rescissions.
Those rescissions this week come on top of a $31.5 million cut in January and a $55 million cut in November.
The OFA determined that the January round of rescissions only cut the deficit by $20.2 million because of projected lapses in state agency accounts.
