HARTFORD — New figures show Connecticut still has a $141.4 million deficit in the current fiscal year’s general fund account, less than a month after Democrats and Republicans passed a bipartisan plan to fix the problem.
Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget director Ben Barnes blamed a continued decline in anticipated state revenues for the red ink. He said in a letter sent Wednesday to the State Comptroller that the state corporation tax fell significantly short of the administration’s targets.
The governor’s office released a statement:
The question is no longer whether we’re in a new economic reality, it’s what we’re going to do about it. Today’s projections make clear that we can’t wait and hope that future revenue projections will save us from making tough decisions. We need to solve our whole fiscal problem, and not with band-aid solutions like using the Rainy Day Fund for next year’s problem. This year can’t be business as usual – we need to do things differently.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano and House Republican Leader Themis Klarides also released a joint statement:
It’s disappointing to see these new projections, which further show the severity of the problems facing our state. But until leaders realize that this is not a new economic reality, that this is the reality our state has been facing for years under the current fiscal policies, we will remain stuck in a pattern of crisis. That’s why it’s so frustrating to see some Democrats still saying the outlook could improve in the next few weeks. This is also why we need to do more than cut and close the immediate deficit before us. We also need to implement long-term structural changes to restore predictability and stability to our budget. Right now, the unpredictability of our state finances is crippling. We have to fix the problem at hand, but we also have to shift the direction of our policies for the long-term.
Malloy and the General Assembly have struggled for months to try to balance the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. They passed a bipartisan plan March 29 to cover a projected $220 million deficit.
They passed another plan Dec. 8 to cover a projected $350 million deficit.
