State Budget

Advocates for low-income residents want the state to create a new health program for poor adults who don't get Medicaid coverage, and they say lawmakers must commit to doing so this year to make it work as part of federal health reform.

"We should take this opportunity and we need to take it now," said Jane McNichol, executive director of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut.

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As tax season arrives, advocates for the Connecticut's new income tax credit for working poor families are trying to keep commercial tax preparers -- and revenue-hungry state officials -- from getting their hands on it.

The Connecticut Association for Human Services, one of the private, nonprofit community's leading anti-poverty organizations, is coordinating an outreach campaign to steer needy households to free tax preparation services also run by nonprofits.

"The more money you spend on gambling, the more revenue you make, the likelihood is greater you are going to have more problems," said Marvin Steinberg, who steps down this week as head of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. He called the relationship between an increase in gambling and an increase in gambling problems inescapable.

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Pension concessions granted by unionized state employees last year will provide just over one-third of the $4.8 billion savings projected by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration, nonpartisan legislative fiscal analysts reported Friday.

Spurred by a new study showing the high costs of treating the mentally ill in prison, the Malloy administration is searching for ways to treat nonviolent offenders outside the prison system.

It costs Connecticut nearly double to both incarcerate and treat an offender with serious mental illnesses, compared with the price of treatment alone, according to a new academic study that analyzed social service and correction trends in 2006 and 2007.

Despite the down economy, the need for home care workers is booming. But experts worry about finding enough people to take jobs that often come with low pay, no benefits, and a history of being devalued.

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Gov. Dannel P. Malloy unveiled plans Monday to reverse nearly two decades of budget gimmicks that leave the state facing huge payments over the next two decades to sustain Connecticut's grossly underfunded state employee pension fund.

But while Malloy touted potential long-range savings, they come with a high price that must be paid up front: an extra $3 billion in pension payments between next fiscal year and 2023. After 2024, the contribution would drop annually, and by 2031 Connecticut would be $5.8 billion ahead.

One of the leading Wall Street credit rating agencies downgraded Connecticut's rating Friday, citing a heavily loaded state credit card, huge debts in pension and retiree health care programs, and a depleted emergency reserve.

The decision by Moody's Investors Service to lower state government's bond rating from Aa3 to Aa2, opens the door for Connecticut to pay higher interest charges on future capital projects, even though its rating remains relatively high.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's vaunted fiscal cushion has begun to erode quickly, and an underperforming state income tax is the chief culprit. Fiscal analysts for the executive and legislative branches agreed on a consensus revenue report late Tuesday that pushes the current budget to the brink of a deficit -- or possibly over it.

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