Connecticut Budget Deficits – As far as the eye can see!
Despite the political spin that he had put Connecticut’s fiscal house in order, Governor Dannel Malloy has presided over a continuous sea of red ink when it comes to the Connecticut state budget.
As Keith Phaneuf explains in a recent CT Mirror article entitled, CT budget closes in deficit again; little reserves left for this year,
“The governor insisted throughout his 2014 re-election campaign that nonpartisan deficit forecasts were wrong, and that growth projections for Connecticut’s economy — and correspondingly for state revenues — were too conservative.But state government has had nothing but deficits since the governor’s re-election. Connecticut closed the 2015 fiscal year with the General Fund $113.2 million in the red.Malloy began to acknowledge in the summer of 2015 that the economic growth he’d predicted was lagging, and by January 2016 he’d begun declaring repeatedly that Connecticut faced a “new economic reality” of modest growth. The Democratic governor’s Republican critics say this economic shift was evident years earlier and that the governor would not admit it until after he had won a second term.”
The actual numbers paint a stark and depressing picture:
Connecticut’s string of budgets in deficit:
Fiscal Year15 $113 Million Deficit
Fiscal Year16 $170 Million Deficit
Fiscal Year17 Present year – Deficit (To Be Admitted)
Fiscal Year18 $1.3 Billion Deficit (Projected)
Fiscal Year19 $1.6 Billion Deficit (Projected)
Despite two record tax increases and unparalleled budget cuts over the last six years, Connecticut Budget Deficits - As far as the eye can see! - Wait What?:
