At CT Capitol: Mansplaining, nonprofit ‘crisis,’ Trump uncertainty, a $2B surplus and $540M deficiency

Hartford Courant – Monday, May 19, 2025
By Christopher Keating

In an annual ritual that repeats every spring, Connecticut state legislators are acting like college students.

Though the legislative session began Jan. 8, lawmakers have postponed key decisions on the most important issues facing the state and are now rushing toward the June 4 end date. Like students who know for months when their term paper is due, lawmakers traditionally delay their work until the end of the legislative session and then stay up all night to finish the assignments.

That scenario played out at the state Capitol last week as lawmakers engaged in an all-day marathon of negotiations and delays with the state Senate voting shortly before midnight on a bill to regulate artificial intelligence.

Senate Democrats introduced their latest version of the bill during a news conference at 11:15 a.m., but did not vote until more than 12 hours later after numerous twists, turns, delays resulted in a watered down version of the bill. That new version, in a compromise with Republicans who had opposed the original version, removed so many objections that it passed by a surprisingly easy margin of 32 to 4.

As an entrepreneur who started his own company, Gov. Ned Lamont had spoken strongly against the original version of the bill, saying he feared that the best computer coders and their companies would avoid Connecticut if the state became known for trying to regulate one of the most important industries on the planet.

Lamont says he is still reading the latest version but maintains that the does not want to “scare away some innovators.”

House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Hartford Democrat, declined to schedule a debate last year when Lamont threatened a veto, but said he needed more details on this year’s latest version because he was home and not closely watching the Senate debate when it passed near midnight.

“We’ll see how it plays out,” Ritter told reporters. “We’ve got a long way to go. … Give us a chance to digest it over the weekend and see where we are.”

Ritter, though, said he has sympathy for Lamont’s viewpoint.

“I think it truly is a question of whether Connecticut should be the first state to regulate in this way,” Ritter told reporters. “I think that’s where the governor is coming from, and I tend to agree with that position. … I do agree. I think we’re too small and when other states or Congress does it, it will be easier to do it.”

The day-long struggle over the AI bill and the compromise to attract Republican votes show that the sausage factory has been running full throttle at the state Capitol as lawmakers try to make progress on major issues facing the state. Like the process of making sausages, legislators say it often is not pretty.

While some legislators were scrambling Wednesday to pass the bill on artificial intelligence, other groups were simultaneously busy on other key issues. Those included trying to craft the state’s two-year, $55.5 billion budget and attempting to reduce electricity rates after multiple years of failing to solve a thorny, complex problem.

PURA and electricity

As the artificial intelligence drama was unfolding, Sen. Norm Needleman, an Essex Democrat who co-chairs the energy committee, was working in his small office that is tucked under a staircase in the far corner of the Capitol’s fourth floor. Different officials have been seen coming and going from the office, including Jonny Dach, Lamont’s top policy adviser on difficult issues, and Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, a Westport Democrat who co-chairs the committee with Needleman.

Both Needleman and Dach recently expressed optimism that they will make progress on the complicated issue of electricity before the June 4 adjournment.

As those talks are proceeding behind closed doors, the overriding issue in the background is the ongoing controversy with the Public Utility Regulatory Authority and its co-chairwoman, Marissa Gillett. Even after her renomination as a utility regulator was recently confirmed by the legislature, she has remained in a constant clash with the state’s utilities that has led to court battles that have spilled into the public eye.

Despite years with little progress, Ritter believes there will be a comprehensive deal in the coming weeks to help improve the state’s long-running electricity problems. The reason, he said, is that all parties are at the table.

“They have been meeting nonstop,” Ritter said. “I expect we will have a really good bill.”

If the bill is signed into law, Ritter strongly wants to turn the page, end the soap opera, and keep the controversial agency out of the newspapers.

“I don’t ever want to talk about PURA again,” Ritter said sternly. “I don’t want them up here lobbying the legislators and talking to legislators. Go do your job. Leave us alone. Bring rates down, and if we’re passing laws that make it harder for you to bring rates down, then let us know that.”

State budget

While electricity and artificial intelligence are important, lawmakers say their biggest responsibility is crafting the state budget that impacts hundreds of cities and towns, nonprofits, colleges, and state agencies that are all scrambling for a piece of the financial pie that will be about $27 billion for the fiscal year that starts on July 1.

But Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, a New Haven Democrat, says the budget is highly unusual this year. After first winning election in 1980, Looney has spent the past 44 years with a front-row seat in seeing how the state’s business gets done.

He says he has never seen anything like the uncertainty brought about by Republican President Donald Trump’s administration.

“It really has an air of contingency and somewhat unreality to it compared to conventional times,” Looney told The Courant in an interview.

“It’s almost as if we’re performing a play on stage here in Hartford, and we’re looking into the wings and offstage to get word on what’s happening on another play going on in Washington that’s going to affect the outcome of our play. That’s where we are on this. Until we know what the outcome will be there, it will be hard for us to really put things in order here.”

As a result, lawmakers need contingency plans to be able to react to federal cuts.

“We are going to have to find a way to backfill most, if not all, of whatever the Medicaid cuts turn out to be,’ Looney said. “We’re also are committed to doing other things like early childhood education. We have to do that independent of what happens with the federal cuts. That’s a critical need in our state.”

Among the groups seeking money are nonprofit organizations that hold contracts with the state to perform services that would have been handled by state employees at a higher cost because they earn higher salaries and pensions. The nonprofits recently placed a video advertisement on social media that will continue running until the session ends.

“Federal spending cuts are looming, inflation is up, and we may be headed towards a recession,” the video states. “The need for nonprofit services is increasing. Flat state funding won’t keep up with costs, and without adequate funds, programs will close.”

Gian Carl Casa, a former top state budget official who is now president of the nonprofit community alliance, says the nonprofits are “in crisis today” and will face bigger problems if federal budget cuts are deep.

“Connecticut has a $2 billion surplus, and that’s big enough to help nonprofits today,” he said. “We urge lawmakers to approve a budget with an increase.”

A key budgetary issue will be tackled Monday when the state House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the annual “deficiency” bill that outlines all the over-spending by the state government in the current fiscal year. The over-spending does not mean that there will be a deficit because tax collections have been strong at the same time. The latest estimate by the state comptroller’s office is that the state is projected to end the current fiscal year on June 30 with an estimated surplus of $461 million.

The overspending in various categories for the current fiscal year is about $540 million in a wide variety of departments. The numbers, however, will be updated on the House floor when the bill is introduced.

Both Lamont and the legislature were crafting a compromise on a deficiency in the Medicaid account due to overspending of $284 million as of last month for the program that provides health care for an estimated 1 million to 1.2 million low-income Connecticut residents. Lamont told reporters recently that Medicaid is an issue in 49 other states as well.

Frustration and mansplaining

Known for being mild-mannered, Ritter surprised reporters last week by going off on a tangent after saying that he felt he was being lectured by the Lamont administration.

Ritter blurted out that he was tired of the “mansplaining,” which prompted some puzzled lawmakers and Capitol insiders to ask what that means. Simply, it means being lectured by a man in a patronizing and condescending way.

Ritter declined to say exactly who was doing the “mansplaining,” but he said there were too many people in the room for the latest budget negotiations. Insiders said the concerns were with Lamont’s budget chief, Jeff Beckham, who has been a strong advocate of the so-called fiscal guardrails that have generated budget surpluses during the Lamont years. While the guardrails have been successful, some Democrats say they have blocked spending on important issues like early childhood programs and public education.

The issue came up when Ritter was asked about the status of the budget talks. He said he did not mind talking about it because he lost sleep over the issue following negotiations that did not go well.

“It’s time for less mansplaining and time for people to be in the room who can actually negotiate,” Ritter told reporters. “I’m getting to the point where there’s too many mansplainers in there, and I only want people who want to negotiate.”

“Whoa! What are you talking about?” a veteran reporter asked.

Ritter replied that the large budget negotiating group needs to be reduced, which will make it easier to craft a compromise as they “make it smaller and get the people who want to negotiate.”

Referring to House Majority Leader Jason Rojas of East Hartford, Ritter said, “Jason and I don’t need to be told about the guardrails. We wrote them. … We know about them. We know all about them. All that success, eight years later, goes back to that room. So don’t tell me about the guardrails. I know about them.”

Despite his frustration, Ritter is traditionally known to be optimistic. In the end, he says he believes a compromise will be worked out.

With all the uncertainty, Looney said the final word will not be written on the state budget when the legislative session ends on June 4. Instead, he expects to see lawmakers returning to Hartford in September because the federal fiscal year does not start until October 1, meaning the federal budget will likely not be settled on Connecticut’s time frame.

“I see post-Labor Day,” Looney said of a future special session. “Maybe even later than that. In August, we might not have sufficient information to do anything definitive. It’s a wacky year, absolutely.”

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