[eric51]

No real effort to reduce spending at all. What a fiscal mess. Property taxes at 100% of appraised value! The housing market hasn't recovered from the market crash of 08 - 09. This is not going to help. A more "progressive" income tax and raise the sales tax!

The state already has a very negative ranking for taxes, cost of living, economy and retirees. This is going to make it worse.

I feel sorry for CT residents. This is just another blow to a once vibrant state. I'm glad we left 6 months ago. I just wish my children ad their families could get out.

[Mike 75]

Originally Posted by JayCT

More layoffs of state workers may be coming if negotiations with the unions do not go as the Governor wants. As many as 1,100 more layoffs could occur which is on top of the 1,000 that were laid off last year. Jay

Layoffs may be ahead for 1,100 state workers - Connecticut Post

Why threaten? Just cut them now. Maybe that will get the attention of the unions. Malloy may be a lame duck, but he's freed from kow towing to the unions for reelection.

[Mike 75]

How about taxes on the pension payments to retired state and municipal employees? The state can use the proceeds to contribute to the under funded pensions. Win win, no?

[Matrix2791]

Originally Posted by Mike 75

How about taxes on the pension payments to retired state and municipal employees? The state can use the proceeds to contribute to the under funded pensions. Win win, no?

Haha pensions going back into pensions. The State can really put a spin on that.

[larsm]

Originally Posted by Mr_250

Property tax is essentially a 30% increase a year! of course, that hits the middle class more than anyone.

Unless I am missing something, this issue is solely optics. Towns are not constrained by 70% of property value to raise more monies as the mill rate is 100% controlled by town. Towns back into mill rate based upon spending needs instead of the reverse sadly.

[MikefromCT]

The lawmakers of this state need to wake up and start realizing they can't solve these budget woes with continued tax hikes. If they had even a rudimentary understanding of economics, they would understand that. We had the option to legalize marijuana and tax it, the way Massachusetts has done. But no, we would lose our puritanism and New Englandiness if we did that (to which I say, who cares) so apparently it's easier to just pile more tax burdens on the backs of citizens.

And people wonder why I can no longer defend this state and am contemplating leaving. And before any of you retort with the "no county tax" card or justify the taxes as a way to keep our quality of life, lest we forget, the last 2 largest tax hikes in our state's history did nothing to improve quality of life for anyone except government employees and people on public assistance. This state government needs an enema.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by Mike 75

Why threaten? Just cut them now. Maybe that will get the attention of the unions. Malloy may be a lame duck, but he's freed from kow towing to the unions for reelection.

The problem with that is he then risks alienating the unions and state employees. Despite what people think, it is usually better to work with them than to just cut them off like that. There could be strikes and lawsuits and things would get even messier than they are now. Jay

[GeoffD]

I don't see where Connecticut is wildly out of line with the national average or the New England / NY tri-state average.

Here are 2014 per-capita spending numbers broken out by state and by category.
State and Local General Expenditures, Per Capita | Tax Policy Center

K-12 education is a bit high which isn't surprising for a powerful teacher union state with really cushy benefits. I suspect the problem is the huge disparity caused by using local property taxes to fund K-12 public education. Massachusetts and California use state money to make up for property tax limitation ballot initiatives. Vermont has a state school property tax so a Greenwich and a Bridgeport pay the same property tax rate for the school part of taxes.

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by eric51

No real effort to reduce spending at all. What a fiscal mess. Property taxes at 100% of appraised value! The housing market hasn't recovered from the market crash of 08 - 09. This is not going to help. A more "progressive" income tax and raise the sales tax!

The state already has a very negative ranking for taxes, cost of living, economy and retirees. This is going to make it worse.

I feel sorry for CT residents. This is just another blow to a once vibrant state. I'm glad we left 6 months ago. I just wish my children ad their families could get out.

The trouble is where to cut. Our spending is slightly higher on welfare then other states but about midpack for other spending. In fact in a number of categories we under spend per capita. The reason for our problems is huge debt and unfunded pensions that were kicked down the road for decades. We don't outspend other states anymore we just have idiots who put us in debt for the last 40 years. If you take out debt service and unfunded pensions CT would actually be close to the top of the list for least state spending per capita. Amazing but true. We have no choice due to past mistakes but to have high taxes and low services. If I'm looking correctly at the numbers we in fact spend about the same as TN on services provided by the state they just have a way lower debt load.

Also side note our state spending includes 21% of funding from the federal government TN on the other hand gets 41%. CT is also about average for pension benefits thanks to reductions over the years.

Which states pay the most generous public pension benefits? • AEI

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2015/rpt/pdf/2015-R-0267.pdf

https://ballotpedia.org/Total_state_...t_expenditures

[East of the River]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

I don't see where Connecticut is wildly out of line with the national average or the New England / NY tri-state average.

Here are 2014 per-capita spending numbers broken out by state and by category.
State and Local General Expenditures, Per Capita | Tax Policy Center

K-12 education is a bit high which isn't surprising for a powerful teacher union state with really cushy benefits. I suspect the problem is the huge disparity caused by using local property taxes to fund K-12 public education. Massachusetts and California use state money to make up for property tax limitation ballot initiatives. Vermont has a state school property tax so a Greenwich and a Bridgeport pay the same property tax rate for the school part of taxes.

Yeah exactly. And education is one of those big reasons people live here so cutting that makes little sense.

We always joke about treating the state budget like a personal budget and here is what we have.

You make 1600 a month

your spending 600 a month on a crappy apartment

your spending 200 a month on food

your spending 200 a month on gas and car expenses to get to work

your spending another 200 on electric heat and phone

and you have 600 a month in credit card debt.

There are no really great solutions.