It may be four months late, but Connecticut now has a new biennium budget.
On Tuesday afternoon, Governor Dannel Malloy signed into law the bipartisan budget deal approved by the General Assembly last week.
While Malloy said this isn't a budget he would have negotiated, it did incorporate many of his own priorities.
“This budget fully funds our state pensions, and this budget restores more than $100 million in funding to the University of Connecticut and our other state colleges and universities,” he said at a news conference at the Capitol. “It includes a new ECS formula that recognizes the impact of poverty and English language learners in our highest-need communities, and much more.”
Malloy did veto appropriations for the hospital tax, a line item that the governor said was written in a way that would make hospitals ineligible for federal Medicaid reimbursement and create a $1 billion hole in the budget.
Malloy is urging the legislature to convene quickly to fix the language.
“The language on its face defies the approval process, meaning that we could be out-of-pocket by over a billion dollars,” he said.
Connecticut was the last state in the country to approve a new two-year budget.
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