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From the transcript of the Connecticut Senate - June 25, 2007 - debate on the budget:

"SEN. LOONEY:

Yes, thank you, Mr. President. I'm rising to speak in support of the bill. Would like to join my commendations* to those of others in talking about the extraordinary hard work and visionary work of Senator Harp and Representative Merrill and Senator Daily and Representative Staples in this process."

From the transcript of the House of Representatives session of June 23, 2007:

"REP. MERRILL: (54^th)

"Thank you. Well, it's late. I had a long speech planned, but tonight I rise to ask for the support of this Bill this year, which is the state budget for the State of Connecticut.

But since the hour is late, I think I'll save the speech, and I'm sure you'll all be glad, but I would like to summarize what we're looking at before us, and give a little background to the budget this year.

In February, the Governor introduced her budget to the state, and we all know now that she proposed in the strongest and most convincing of terms, a dramatic increase in funding for education to the towns and cities of the state.

The increase was not solely in the education cost share grant, which is the primary revenue sharing grant from the state to towns to provide equity for education.

She proposed equally bold measures to create a system of early childhood programs, and the most substantial increase in need-based scholarship aid to help students attend college and university in over a decade.

Many of us have labored for years to achieve these goals, and we applaud her, both then and now. Equally importantly at the time she spoke, it seemed that the Governor understood that in order to increase aid to towns in this way, that the state budget would need to increase in the first few years in order to shift costs from the towns to the state.

By increasing state funding for education and other things, we were effectively shifting a portion of the largest local cost from the local property tax to the state income tax.

So correspondingly, when she introduced her measures for education, she also boldly again, introduced tax increases to pay for them.

A combination of events since that time brings us to today, and I think the first one really was a large jump in around April in the revenues, and the surplus as we know this year continued to grow, standing today at over $ 900 million for the current fiscal year.

Suddenly, tax cut proposals began to multiply, so instead of tax increases, suddenly those began to look a little bit quaint at that point, and the dire forecast that had been proposed earlier in the Session seemed out of date, and they were less compelling, and it became more difficult, I think, to support tax increases, even to propose a historic shift to promote property tax reform.

And although many of us still believe that that property tax reform in a more permanent way would be preferable, I think that, ironically, a large surplus and increased revenues has meant that we have the budget before us today, which still does many, many good things for the State of Connecticut.

It is a compromise, as all good budgets are, and it is a budget that contains no major tax increases, no major reforms, but still very bold measures to increase funding for education, healthcare and many other priorities for the state.

It does make major investments in education for children of all ages, from an expansion of early childhood education, to K-12 education, and as I said, the largest increase in need-based financial aid for college students in a decade. Those are major accomplishments, and we should all be proud.

The new funding does not come unencumbered. We have strong new accountability measures built into this budget, particularly where there are still sizeable numbers of students in our state not able to achieve at even a basic level.

This may be the most pressing problem in our state and has serious implications for all of us. In this budget, we have given the State Department of Education a strong role in the spending of the new dollars, and we will continue to monitor the progress of these students through the results-based accountability outcome measures for the first time.

In fact, every new or expanded program in this budget will be required to account for its results in real terms when they report back to the Appropriations Committee next year. This is the first time we have implemented such a requirement, and we intend to enforce it.

I am personally most proud of the initiative to increase access to healthcare, to careful investment of dollars in critical healthcare programs, particularly for children. This has not been easy. The cost of healthcare is one of the most dramatic drivers of the state's budget.

Just like everyone else, from individuals to small businesses, the state's healthcare costs are skyrocketing. In fact, since we cover healthcare costs for the sick, the poor and the elderly, the state has even larger cost increases.

It is endangering our system of care. Hospitals are facing huge deficits, and doctors cannot afford to see children who are covered by the state.

In fact, rates to reimburse doctors have not been increased for over 15 years. Does this budget raise those rates? Yes, it does, substantially, and importantly, still not 100% but it makes substantial progress.

There are many more important agencies and areas of the budget that are still recovering from some of the cuts we made during the recession earlier in the decade.

I was here several years ago when we made significant cuts to almost every agency. We are still feeling those impacts, and we are trying to make progress.

The budget does, just to mention some of the highlights of what we're doing in this budget. It increases funding for state parks, just one example of some of the many things we're doing. They were greatly in need. We've included $ 1. 7 million to hire additional park personnel.

This budget is also for the elderly who need vouchers for personal care assistance so they can remain in their homes.

In the short term we've added several million dollars. We think it will save money when they don't go into nursing homes. They need transportation services through Dial-A-Ride, expanded bus services. These are all provided in this budget.

Speaking of nursing homes, the budget is for nursing homes. We've increased their funding by 3%, same for the private providers of services to the disabled, the mentally ill, the homeless, and the chronically ill.

This budget is for the mentally disabled children who have reached 21 and their program to give them job skills and day programs. It was not fully funded. Now it is.

I know many of you have received letters from thousands of parents who care for their children at home and are desperate for these services. I'm proud to say we have funded those services in this budget.

This budget is for universities and colleges struggling with a 40% increase in enrollment over the last few years. They can't hire enough full-time faculties. Some money is provided for that.

We have built beautiful buildings for colleges in this state, but we haven't been able to fully cover the operating costs. This budget covers those costs.

We also, as I said, increased need-based financial aid. I can't tell you how important this is for students to be able to access the education that we have now provided for them.

It's also to expand the HUSKY Program for more children, and this is probably one of the most important things we're doing in the budget for healthcare. This will cover thousands more children in our state.

I hope we will be able to say by the end of this Session, that every child in Connecticut has access to healthcare. I think we're there with this. We're doing outreach. We're increasing the rate so that we can cover every child up to 185% of poverty.

It isn't even very expensive, and we get half of our investments back from the federal government. It's good policy and it's good fiscal policy.

We've budgeted for our transportation system, the one area I truly think we're making progress. We made a commitment several years ago to make significant investments in transportation. We continue that commitment.

This budget extends rail lines from New Haven to New London, increases bus service to new parts of the state, particularly for the elderly who are dependent on Dial-A-Ride and other transit services. Again, progress toward a worthy goal.

It's for new initiatives so we could hopefully make some progress on some pressing issues. We expanded several prevention programs, particularly to the area of mentoring and literacy for children and families, new job training programs in industry shortage or newly emerging fields such as nursing and high tech.

We're helping young people get jobs and internships in urban centers, and get to college. We spent a large portion of our growing surplus on one-time expenses and paying down debts.

This budget pays off the Energy Conservation Fund, which we borrowed against during the recession. This will free up additional funds to help people move toward energy independence, a topic that has occupied all of us this Session.

We also provide funding from surplus for a number of IT projects, DPH for example, the primary agency that's tracking everything from infectious diseases to issuing birth certificates, has computer systems that are quite antiquated. It takes up to one year to get a birth certificate in this state when a baby's born. It's about time we upgrade.

The budget also contemplates that the Teacher Retirement Fund will be addressed and fully funded. Low interest rates have provided us an opportunity to save millions of dollars over time to pay down the unfunded liability in the Teachers Fund with a bill that we passed earlier this Session.

We also set aside over $ 10 million to begin to address the long-term liability of our state healthcare plan. These are all wise uses of surplus for the long term.

These are just a few of the initiatives that are covered in our budget this year, and I just want to take this opportunity before I go over the sort of numbers part of the budget, to particularly thank all the people that worked on the budget.

We do this every year, but I think this year they've been particularly patient with us, and particularly I want to thank the Office of Fiscal Analysis staff who have always stood by trying to help us out as we work through all thee many thousands of hours of numbers, and also, of course, the staff of the Appropriations and the Finance Committees.

I hope you will all join me tonight in voting for this budget. It's an important document for the State of Connecticut. We've all worked on it very hard.

I am pleased to say that I think there's agreement in this Chamber, both sides of the aisle, that this will be a positive step for the State of Connecticut." 

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From the transcript of the House of Representatives session of May 3, 2006:

"REP. VILLANO: (91^st)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to support the implementer, and I want to thank Representative Merrill for an extraordinarily great job on putting the Implementer together, dealing with public health and human services programs.

And I wanted to thank her also for her very clear and concise summary of the 50 plus sections that are in the Implementer.

. . . 

REP. GIBBONS: (150^th)

I guess it was good morning when we left last night, so it's good morning on a new day. I stand in support of this Amendment.

I have to say that was invited to sit in on the Implementer Session this year, and I was very impressed, not only by the long hours and hard work that have gone into making this document what it is today, but by the great spirit of cooperation from both sides of the aisle.

REP. SHARKEY: (88^th)

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I, too want to rise in support of the Bill, and I want to thank Chairman Merrill and the other Members of the Appropriations Committee for their hard work.

REP. O'NEILL: (69^th)

Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too would like to join in thanking Chairman Merrill for her hard work on the DSS Implementer, the Bill that's before us today, and the staff, and the many hours of meetings that we had to discuss this.

I had the opportunity this year, unlike last year, to participate in the discussions that went into the creation of this language and adding, and in some cases subtracting, various proposals that people would bring to us."