Communications Director, Connecticut Hospital Association
110 Barnes Road, Wallingford, CT
rall@chime.org, 203-265-7611
CT Mirror – Sunday, May 18, 2025
By Keith M. Phaneuf
At first glance, last week’s budget brinkmanship between Gov. Ned Lamont and the General Assembly’s Democratic majority was over a mundane issue.
When would Connecticut take $300 million out of its $6.5 billion pile of unused cash to make mandatory Medicaid payments to clinics, social service agencies and other providers that treat the poor?
But beneath this procedural conflict was a much bigger battle over the budget controls that helped generate the state’s $4.1 billion rainy day fund — accumulated largely since Lamont took office in 2019 — and the $2.4 billion surplus projected for this fiscal year.