by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — The State Bond Commission has approved just over $650 million in allocations, providing funds for everything from education to housing opportunities and improved public safety.
“We continue making long-term commitments to Connecticut’s future, including major support for early childhood and K-12 education, housing, public safety, environmental protection, and modernizing state government,” Lamont said. “These actions will strengthen our communities, support families and businesses, and help make Connecticut more affordable and competitive.”
Among the line items the panel approved were $16.5 million for capital improvements at childcare facilities, a MyCHESLA graduate loan program that is expected to provide low-cost loans to 1,200 graduate students in its first year, $60 million to modernize information technology infrastructure across state government and $10 million to support the construction of 150 housing units near transit centers and in downtowns.
In a media briefing after the meeting, Lamont touted the progress the state has made in paying down fixed costs over the past few years.
“For the previous 20 years our fixed costs had been growing, growing, growing, a bigger and bigger piece of our budget, and a lot of that was related to bonding,” he said. “We’ve turned that around, our fixed costs are a shrinking piece of that. Bonding is down a little bit as a percentage of our budget compared to where we were 10 years ago. … So I think we have a lot less risk in our budget then we had say, eight years ago.”
State Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, a commission member who also is the Republican nominee to challenge Lamont in the 2026 election,, raised the only two objections and casting the only “no” vote of the afternoon on a $66 million allocation to the Department of Housing.
The allocation financed loans for housing projects and programs under the Flexible Housing Program to finance new construction or rehabilitation of housing units and for immediate needs of existing housing projects.
Fazio said he was concerned about the lack of a competitive bid process for the flexible program.
“I understand why we might want to have some more flexible, less formulaic funding without a competitive bid process,” he said. He added “I wonder why in the 2022 guidance to the flex funding program there was a limit on $4 million per project and in 2025 that limit was taken away so you saw some of the projects get upwards of $20 million.”
Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno answered that earlier projects had been smaller scale, about 50 units. However those did not meet the state’s needs, so there are now larger projects, including a 155-unit affordable housing project recently completed in Hartford, that require more funding from the state.
Fazio also raised an objection to a $7 million allocation to the state colleges and universities, pointing out that UConn 2000 bonds were excluded from the state’s bonding cap. UConn 2000 is an ongoing large infrastructure modernization and expansion program that has seen roughly $5 billion in capital expenditures.
UConn 2000 bonds, though, were not on the agenda and after Fazio’s comments the CSCU bonding item passed unanimously.
In his own press conference after the meeting, Fazio said due to policy changes, the state was borrowing above its self-imposed limit.
“Which will mean more debt on the back of taxpayers in this state who already can’t afford to live here,” he said. “We need to hold fast to our budget guardrails, be fiscally responsible, protect taxpayers and not go around or above bonding caps, spending caps or any other caps that are meant to protect taxpayers.”