by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — The two-year, $55.8 billion budget that passed out of the Connecticut House of Representatives on a mostly party-line vote late Monday night remains within the state budget cap despite increasing spending by $2.63 billion over the next two fiscal years.
According to the Office of Fiscal Analysis the budget, introduced as House Bill 7287, appropriates $27.1 billion in the 2026 fiscal year and $28.6 billion in 2027. The OFA estimated the budget would be $900,000 under the spending cap in 2026 and $75.2 million under the cap in 2027.
During the afternoon and evening-long debate, Republicans offered a series of amendments, including one that would have reallocated $116 million from health care to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
According to Rep. Joe Polletta, R-Watertown, the amendment would have funded the Passport to Parks program by removing funds that he said would have supported health care for undocumented immigrants. That amendment failed by a 98-46 vote with seven representatives absent or not voting.
Other Republican amendments also failed by similar margins.
The final budget package passed the House by a 99-49 margin. No Republicans supported it. Two Democrats — Christopher Poulos of Southington and Jill Barry of Glastonbury — also voted against the final package. Democrat Marcus Brown of Bridgeport and Republicans Chris Stewart of Putnam and Donna Veach of Berlin were listed as absent or not voting.
The budget now moves on to the Senate.
“It is a budget that continues to move the state of Connecticut forward, and make critical investments where we believe they need to be made while still working within the fiscal constraints that we have and continuing to pay down long-term debt and obligations,” said Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford. “While people may not be happy with every single section or every piece of the budget, overall it’s a really good document for the people of Connecticut and for the state.”
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said some of the highlights of the bill included increases to Medicaid funding and the distribution of $250 checks to all Earned Income Tax Credit-eligible households with a child, about 85,000 households in all.
The budget bill also includes some other items like the Shield Act, which protects healthcare providers and recipients from liability from another state after lawfully engaging in reproductive or gender-affirming care in Connecticut.
“Texas should not be coming in and suing our doctors,” Ritter said.
The budget also includes components of Senate Bill 7, a health care bill that passed the House and Senate that includes other broad protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care, as well as emergency services, opioid response efforts, and public health infrastructure. The version that passed the House, however, did not include language establishing safe injection sites where people could safely inject drugs. Language establishing safe injections sites also was not included in the final version of the legislation that was added to the budget bill.
Ritter touted the work between the legislature and the governor’s office to present a final budget deal that he said increased funding for special education without having to raise taxes.
“I think a lot of people never thought we’d get to this point. And it’s a reminder that if you just keep going, if you keep negotiating, if you keep coming up with ideas, you can solve even the most difficult of problems,” he said.
Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, the House minority leader, was less enthusiastic.
“While many people may like this budget for what it does for individual constituencies, in the long run it’s setting the state of Connecticut up for failure and for tax increases,” Candelora said, adding that the budget would be in violation of federal law.
“They’re continuing to fund illegal immigrant healthcare,” he said. “In total it is going to jeopardize over a billion dollars in federal funding.”
The end result, Candelora said, was that the legislature would need to hold a special session to address the budget.
“There is no question that we are going to be back here in the fall filling holes that are created in this budget today,” he said.
In response to questions, Candelora said there were aspects of the budget that his caucus liked, such as increased Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) funding and special education funding.
“There are things that we like,” he said. “What I don’t like is the complete lack of prioritization of programs.”
He added that policies that resulted in the current budget falling into deficit had not been addressed, calling it a “fait accompli” that the new budget would do the same.
On Monday afternoon, before the House had even begun discussion on the budget, state organizations began reacting to the budget as details trickled out.
Gian Carl Casa, president and CEO of the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance, thanked Lamont and the legislature for including funding increases in the second year of the two-year budget.
After flat-funding nonprofit, community-based providers that contract with the state in the first year, the budget proposal includes a funding increase in the second year of the biennium. The increased funding in the 2026-27 fiscal year includes $76 million for all providers, plus $30 million for non-developmental disability providers. There also is $15 million for Medicaid rates over what the Appropriations Committee approved, and a $66 million union settlement for developmental disability service providers.
“The budget is not everything we requested, but in the context of this year’s discussions about budget restrictions, we are grateful for their choice to support programs that will improve thousands of lives and even save some,” he said.