HARTFORD – The big question going into Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s last opening day address is what will the Democrat have to say after dropping his budget proposal two days early.
Malloy is expected to lay out his administration’s accomplishments as he sees them in his speech to a joint session of the General Assembly at noon today.
He will likely highlight health care, energy and climate policy, housing and homelessness, criminal justice and gun violence prevention, voting rights, and employee protections, including paid sick days, pay discrimination, and increases to the minimum wage.
Indications are that the governor also will be salting his retrospective with some bold policy initiatives that were held back or little noticed when he released his proposed adjustments to next year’s $20.8 billion state budget two days early on Monday.
The state’s ongoing financial troubles means more tough choices to make to balance the 2019 fiscal year budget and more challenges in keeping the current $20.5 billion budget balanced.
Democratic and Republican leaders cut Malloy out of the final negotiations of the two-year, $41.3 billion budget that bipartisan majorities approved in late October.
House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, and Senate President Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said on Tuesday that they expect Malloy to be a full participant throughout this year’s budget negotiations.
That remains to be seen.
The narrow political divisions of the legislature and political disagreements that contributed to last year’s nine-month budget gridlock persist.
Republican gains in 2016 reduced former Democratic majorities to a seven-seat edge in the House and an 18-18 tie in the Senate.
The session will take place against the backdrop of what could be a pivotal state elections in November that swings the balance of power in Hartford.
Republican leaders have already slammed the budget adjustments and transportation funding plan that Malloy proposed for proposing additional revenue increases, including electronic highway tolls, increases to gasoline, business, real estate and tobacco taxes, expanding the bottle redemption fee, and eliminating a credit for local property taxes against the state income tax.
The legislature finally passed a two-year plan Oct. 31 four months after the 2018 fiscal year started and nine months after the 2017 session opened.
Democrats and Republicans brokered a compromise only after Malloy used his limited authority to set state spending to cut hundreds of millions in state aid to towns and cities and threatened to withhold even more.
When the governor’s speech turns to his legacy, he may not dwell long on budgeting.
Malloy entered office confronting an estimated two-year budget shortfall of $6.6 billion to $7.1 billion, and he would leave his successor a two-year deficit of more than $2.3 billion based on his own administration’s estimates if the legislature adopts his budget adjustments unchanged.
Employment and economic growth are likely to fall into the same category.
At last report, the state has only regained 76 percent of the 119,000 jobs that the state economy lost while the Great Recession lasted here from March 2008 to February 2010. The state Department of Labor has preliminarily estimated the state added 6,200 jobs in 2017.
The pace of economic growth in Connecticut surged to 3.9 percent in the third quarter of 2017, but economic growth has trailed the national and New England averages for much of Malloy’s tenure.
Connecticut’s economy grew 1 percent in 2016. This was below the national average of 1.5 percent and the New England average of 1.7 percent.
The 2016 increase continued a modest upward trend, but it was less than half of the 2.2 percent rate of growth in 2015.
