“A Budget Tells Us What We Can’t Afford, but It Doesn’t Keep Us from Buying It.” — William Feather
The 2023 Connecticut General Assembly came to its constitutionally mandated end at midnight Wednesday (June 7). The final days saw lawmakers scrambling to beat out the clock to approve a new two-year budget bill and implementer.
The ‘implementer’ is a bill that changes statutes to execute the state budget provisions. Though everything in the implementer must pertain to the budget, legislators like to use this as a vehicle to slip in other language. The implementer does not go through a committee or public hearing process. It tends to be passed late at night and lawmakers when they have the power to sneak in amendments while constituents sleep. This is why the budget implementer has earned a reputation for being full of “rats”.
The proposed $51.1 billion biennial state budget (more than 800 pages) started in the House on Monday (June 5) where it passed (139-12) after a three-hour debate early the next morning. It then cleared the Senate (35-1) after five and a half hours of deliberation early Tuesday night. The bill now sits on Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk.
In a press release on Tuesday, Gov. Lamont applauded the General Assembly for its mostly bipartisan budget highlighting the state’s largest income tax cut in history, as well as increased funding to the Earned Income Tax Credit, K-12 education, childcare programs, affordable housing units and non-profit providers.
Gov. Lamont...
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