Connecticut just got another reminder that the state is swimming in cash. Analysts say the coffers can expect an extra $1 billion over the next two-year budget cycle. The current year is looking at more than $750 million above earlier projections. By June 30 the surplus is on pace for $2.65 billion — the second-largest in state history.
CT Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf opened the story this way: “Gov. Ned Lamont will have extra help managing state finances to start his third term, even as lawmakers seek more dollars for cities and towns, education, childcare and middle-class tax relief.” The headline is “Revenues still surging in CT, opening options in new budget.” The subhead is “Analysts expect $1 billion extra in next biennial budget cycle.”
That is the frame. Extra revenue equals options. Options equal more money for the same list Democrats have been pushing for years. The piece notes that the larger figure in the second year of the next biennium “exceeds the extra investments in town aid and affordable childcare officials made last summer and hailed throughout the just-completed state campaign season as transformative.” Past spending is called “investments.” The surplus is treated as the raw material for more of them.
Most of the projected growth comes from capital gains and investment earnings of wealthy households, plus payments from certain business partnerships that include hedge funds. Sales tax is also climbing. The budget director warned that these are estimates, subject to federal policy and a volatile global economy. That caution sits in one paragraph. The rest of the story is a catalog of spending demands.
Officials want another large payment for affordable childcare. They want to lock in the municipal aid increase that was carved out as a one-time spending-cap exception. There is still $263 million in a special fund created to backfill federal human-services cuts; that money is expected to run out. A citizens’ assembly wants the state to absorb billions in special-education costs now sitting on local property-tax payers. Nonprofits that deliver disability and addiction services say state payments have lagged inflation for decades. Coalitions are asking for new income-tax credits for households with children and for renters.
The story does include Republican voices. House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora said people ran on affordability and the things making Connecticut unaffordable. Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding and Leader-elect Rob Sampson wrote that “Democratic-controlled Connecticut government continues to rake in your tax dollars. So where’s the tax relief?” Those quotes appear near the end.
What the piece does not do is treat the surplus as the product of rules that were written after the last fiscal crisis. The spending cap, the revenue cap, and the volatility cap have forced large surpluses since 2017. Those rules are the reason the state is not already spending every extra dollar. The story asks whether the new Democratic super-majority will revise the caps that “have blocked much spending and forced huge surpluses.” Blocking spending and forcing surpluses is presented as the problem to be solved, not the mechanism that produced the number everyone is now fighting over.
Connecticut already ranks among the highest-taxed states in the country. Residents have watched electric bills, property taxes, and the cost of living climb while the state collected record revenue. The same capital-gains surge that is filling the treasury is also evidence that the people who generate a large share of the income tax can still leave. Past experience shows that when the stock market cools, the surplus disappears faster than the new programs. The budget director said as much. The story lists the spending wish list first.
Lamont himself was restrained. He talked about the progress of the last eight years and keeping momentum. His budget director said the numbers should be viewed with care. Those statements are in the article. They do not drive the framing. The framing is that the money is here and the only remaining question is which Democratic priority gets it.
The new legislature will have historic Democratic majorities. Three Republicans in the Senate. Roughly 35 in the House. That is the environment in which the next budget is written. The press is already telling readers the surplus is an opening for more spending on childcare, town aid, special education, nonprofits, and selected tax credits. It is not telling them, with equal force, that the surplus exists because earlier lawmakers put hard limits on spending and on the use of volatile revenue. It is not leading with the fact that middle-class households have been told for years that high taxes are the price of the services they already receive.
The numbers are real. The growth is real. The question is what the state does with money that arrived because the rules stopped it from being spent already. CT Mirror’s answer, in the headline, the lede, and the structure of the piece, is that the money opens options. The options listed are mostly more government. Tax relief is mentioned. It is not the lead. For taxpayers watching their bills, that is the story between the lines.