Connecticut’s budget — specifically, its fiscal guardrails — has been a hot topic this year. How are candidates talking to voters about it? WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Keith Phaneuf to discuss his article, “Candidates try to guide voters through labyrinthine CT budget debate,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. You can read his story here. WSHU: Hello, Keith. The state’s landmark 2017 bipartisan budget agreement established caps to restrain state spending and help fix the state’s finances. But politicians are now debating whether it’s time to adjust some of those constraints. How are they trying to help voters understand the debate? And are voters really interested? KP: Well, that sort of is the $64,000 question. It’s hard to argue that there’s a larger issue coming up than these budget controls for the 2025 session. But because those topics are so wonky, it is difficult, and everyone’s sort of looking for a hook, whether they’re talking about the impact this can have on our children, whether they’re trying to provide an explanation as to why various services are suffering. But some people are trying to attack it with some new branding. You know, the supporters of these controls call them fiscal guardrails; now we’re hearing them referred to as fiscal roadblocks. Everybody’s trying to find some way to make them chuckle. WSHU: Are voters interested in any of this, or is it just going over the heads of most voters? KP: I think they are. But I think, and I don’t mean to be cryptic, they’re interested, and they don’t know they’re interested. Let me give you an example. I know when I was talking with the co-chairs of the Human Services Committee, they would often get asked questions, for example, why are our Medicaid rates so poor? The rates that we pay doctors who treat low-income patients haven’t been adjusted in an across-the-board manner since early 2008. And KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, recently ranked us 42nd out of 50 states in what we pay specialists. So if you’re somebody on HUSKY and you need to see something more than a primary care doctor, good luck, because the money that we’re paying the doctors who will take on new Medicaid patients. We’re not competing with the New Yorks and the Massachusetts of the world. We’re just ahead of West Virginia. Well, when folks are saying, how in the world does something like that happen? Or how is community college tuition this fall 11% higher than it was just two years ago? Or why does it cost almost $30,000 a year to attend Eastern Connecticut State University or any of the regional state universities? People are then saying, the answer is these budget controls or fiscal guardrails. And now we’re into the discussion, and people are finding they’re interested, once they realize what’s at stake. WSHU: And then there’s also an argument that if we spend more money now, our children and grandchildren will be stuck with the bill. KP: That is the hook that some of the conservatives are using. The Yankee Institute for Public Policy recently put out a study that has become the blueprint for some of the real supporters of these guardrails. I think the Yankee president called it the gift that keeps on giving. The estimate that is given is almost $8 billion in surplus funds that we’ve paid into the pensions since 2020. It has stopped our required annual pension contributions from growing by about $650 million. But even that is sparking a lot of debate because it’s a very tricky thing. That makes it sound like there’s $650 million more that you can spend on other programs because we put a surplus in the pensions. Those surplus funds were invested and made more money for the pensions. But here’s the thing: our pension contributions this year are actually up by about $80 million compared with last year’s. They would be up about $730 million higher. So, instead of saying there’s extra money for higher education or social services or health care, that’s not really the truth. What we’re saying is you would have gotten caught a lot worse than you did. They’re not really scooping up the savings. The state is actually keeping that money, but the money’s not going to other programs. We’re just telling other programs. I know you don’t like the funding you’ve gotten, but you would have gotten cut even worse if we hadn’t made these surplus payments. WSHU: But there’s a certain segment of the public that does pay close attention to all of this, and that’s the business community. What’s their take on what’s going on with this debate? KP: Yeah, the business community probably is one of the best-educated groups on this because they feel they have to be. In particular, we have not really kept our promises to the business community. For decades, we’ve had these surcharges on the corporation tax, and they all come with an expiration date, and usually, those are, you know, after two or three years. When the time comes to take away those charges, legislature after legislature just says, ‘Well, we know we said they were going to go away, but they’re not.’ So over time, businesses have become very sensitive to state finances. They know state finances are running in the red, or the state government is letting too many expenses dominate the budget. Inevitably, that leads to tax increases and broken promises. So if there is any group that can tell you exactly what these fiscal guardrails are spending caps that force us to save a portion of volatile revenues, it’s generally the business community. WSHU: And will this make any difference in how voters vote this November? KP: That is really the ultimate crystal ball question. I do think you know that traditionally, the thinking is, as long as you’re not raising taxes, voters will usually not change things up. So I’m not necessarily predicting anything, and so much of this election may be driven by the top of the ticket. Nobody expects Connecticut to vote for Donald Trump in the presidential race. I think everyone’s expecting Connecticut to go for Kamala Harris. But I think overall, that means you’re going to see a push from voters to leave these fiscal guardrails right where they are because they know it’s been since 2019 that we’ve raised state taxes, and we have not raised the state income tax rates since 2015. So I think you’re going to see if there is a push from the voters, it will be to leave things the way they are.