Connecticut lawmakers, hours into the new fiscal year early Friday morning, voted to give Gov. Dannel P. Malloy more budget-cutting authority to balance the state’s new, two-year $40.1 billion budget, which has a $1.6 billion deficit now that state employees have rejected a labor savings and concessions agreement, The Associated Press reports.
“Our goal has been achieved: Connecticut has a budget in place that is balanced honestly, with no gimmicks. To be clear, that’s not a reason to celebrate,” Malloy said in a statement.
On a 78-56 vote in the House of Representatives and a 21-14 vote in the Senate, lawmakers essentially gave the Democratic governor the go-ahead to begin the process of making sweeping spending reductions across all state agencies and issuing thousands of layoff notices.
Malloy acknowledged that closing the deficit involves a lot of pain for people.
“But putting Connecticut on firm fiscal footing — which is what we’ve done — sends an important, much-needed message to the business community and to Wall Street. Now people will know we’re serious about getting our fiscal house in order, and now we can re-focus our attention on job creation,” he said in a statement shortly after the Senate passed the bill.
Lawmakers and Malloy were relying on the $1.6 billion deal to balance the new budget, which they passed in May and takes effect on Friday. But the labor unions last week did not have enough votes to ratify the agreement reached between Malloy’s administration and labor leaders, creating a massive hole in the plan that raises taxes by $1.4 billion in the first year and $1.2 billion in the second to cover a $3.3 billion deficit.
