The state Senate voted along party lines Thursday to approve a $19.7 billion spending plan for the 2017 fiscal year. It will close a projected $1 billion deficit.
The vote was 21-15, with all Democrats voting for it, and Republicans against.
The House is scheduled to vote on the budget Friday.
According to the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis, the revised midterm budget makes combined General Fund changes of $961.6 million. There are $844.1 million in expenditure cuts and increases in revenue of $117.5 million without new state taxes.
A major part of the budget is approximately $300 million in salary reductions for state employees. This could result in up to 2,500 layoffs.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Thursday the new budget also revises how the Office of Policy and Management and the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis calculate estimates for future expenditure growth.
Currently, OPM and OFA determine growth based on current spending. The proposed bill would calculate growth only through fixed-cost drivers, which would include debt service, Medicaid, pensions, and other entitlements.
“This is a critical, structural reform that changes how we will do business in the future, and it’s another step towards making the long-term reforms that we need to implement to be successful both now and down the road,” the governor said in a statement today.
Malloy said as a result all other parts of the budget would assume a budgeting format in which only fixed costs would undergo the same current services calculation. He said this will result in more realistic estimates of spending in the future.
Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) is critical of the Democrats budget plan because the legislation enacting the budget, referred as the implementer bill, was not entirely released in advance of the vote, even though action on the bill had been delayed for more than a week. He said, “Clearly, they have been in the majority too long because they think that they don’t have to answer to anyone but themselves.”
