Connecticut to sharply reduce hiring for state positions, withhold promised funding

CT Insider – Monday, March 10, 2025
By Alex Putterman

Connecticut will significantly slow hiring for state positions and withhold funds promised to state agencies in an effort to save money, according to a memo sent from the Office of Policy and Management to agency heads Friday.

In the memo, OPM Secretary Jeffrey Beckham announced hiring for all positions will be “curtailed” immediately, with requests to fill jobs considered only if the positions are “essential for critical agency operations.”

The memo, obtained Monday by CT Insider, revokes previous approvals to fill open positions, unless formal offers were submitted to candidates by Friday afternoon. Additionally, extensions that might otherwise have been issued automatically will now be reviewed on a “case-by-case basis.”

OPM also informed agencies it plans to hold back about $40.6 million in funds for an array of initiatives, including gun violence prevention, higher education, juvenile review boards and more.

According to the memo, the funding cuts and truncated hiring are necessary because Connecticut is on track to land $61 million over what is permissible under the state’s spending cap, a provision in the state constitution that limits how much expenditures may increase from one year to the next.

The measures were needed, Beckham wrote, “in order to ensure that we comply with this constitutional requirement and that we do not need to hold payments in the current fiscal year.”

OPM spokesperson Chris Collibee said Monday the change in hiring policy does not represent a “freeze,” as the state continues to hire for essential positions, such as correctional officers. He did not provide a timeline for when the hiring restrictions would be lifted.

“We are looking for savings, as the memo outlines, whether it’s hiring or contracting or those sorts of things,” he said.

The allocations being withheld from agencies generally represents money they already did not intend to spend this year, Collibee said. The last time the state implemented these sorts of cost-saving measures was the fall of 2020, he said.

A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont declined to comment Monday, except to emphasize that the new hiring policy is not a “freeze.”

Connecticut currently has more than 32,000 state employees, up about 1% over the past year. Payroll for those employees totaled $5.8 billion in 2024.

Drew Stoner, a spokesperson for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, sharply criticized the hiring restrictions Monday, arguing that many agencies were “already facing crisis level staffing shortages,” even before this new policy.

“This unnecessary hiring freeze is a direct result of the governor’s fanatic interpretation of our fiscal policies that is irresponsibly siphoning off billions from the programs and services our residents need now,” Stoner said in a statement.

Connecticut continues to record budget surpluses each year but is restricted by the state’s spending cap — which says spending can’t increase by more than inflation or the growth in personal income, whichever is greater — as well as other “fiscal guardrails.”

Occasionally, the legislature manages to allocate money outside the spending cap, as it did last week when it approved more than $40 million in funding for special education and non-profit social services.

A growing number of advocates and Democratic lawmakers have proposed tweaking the guardrails to allow for more spending — a debate that will continue to play out in the coming months as Lamont and the legislature negotiate a two-year state budget.

The debate has taken on increasing urgency amid efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce federal spending, including through withholding money that had been previously allocated for states, and promises by some congressional Republicans to drastically cut Medicaid and other federal programs that benefit residents in Connecticut and elsewhere.

Access this article at its original source.