Special Session to deal with Governor Lamont’s loan program set for Tuesday
The Big 5 Issues this Session
Committees Gearing Up
Budget Numbers Looking Better
Links to Live By
- Earlier this week Governor Lamont introduced an idea that the State of CT would offer loans to federal workers who are affected by the ongoing Federal Government shutdown.
- You can go here to read that story.
- Lamont’s plan, which has been widely praised, needs to be enacted by the CT General Assembly and they plan on doing just that.
- Yesterday, legislative leaders announced that they will go into special session on Tuesday of next week to take up legislation to allow the State to implement the Governor’s idea.
- With no major objections expected, this will be an early win for the young Lamont administration and gets them off to a good start.
The Big 5 Issues this Session
- While the loan program has been widely praised by both sides of the aisle, the same cannot be said for the 5 major issues that progressive Democrats are pursuing.
Those 5 are:
- Increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour
- Paid Family Medical Leave Act
- Implementing tolls
- Legalizing sports betting
- Legalizing recreational marijuana
- Chris Keating at the Hartford Courant takes a look at each of these items in his excellent article in the Hartford Courant.
- For CRMA we are obviously concerned about increasing the minimum wage and with paid family leave.
- We will keep a close eye on both bills because like a lot of legislation the devil is in the details.
- The remaining issues, tolls, pot and sports betting will be hotly debated and despite the D’s holding solid majorities in both chambers, we don’ think those issues will be partisan nor will they be settled early in the session.
- So, while the proponents of these issues have aggressive plans as the saying goes, best laid plans…
Committees Gearing Up
- This week more of the Committees that CRMA follows closely held meetings to get themselves organized.
- The General Law Committee, Environment Committee and the Finance Revenue and Bonding Committee all met this week.
- Each committee has various deadlines that they have to comply with and therefore each day we see new bills introduced and sent to committees. We track all those bills that impact the retail and business community.
- If you have any questions about bills or issues that are pending before any committee or the General Assembly we are happy to talk to you about it. Please feel free to email us at tim@ctretailnetwork.com or cathy@ctretailnetwork.com.
Budget Numbers Looking Better
- While we mentioned the Finance Committee, earlier this week, consensus revenue numbers were released that showed that both the sales tax and income tax came in higher than anticipated thereby increasing the rainy day fund.
- The numbers also help with the current year fiscal budget that ends June 30th of 2019.
- Governor Lamont will present his first 2 year budget to the General Assembly in February. These numbers will help him in the short term, but there remains big deficits projected in out years.
- Our friend at the CT Mirror, Keith Phaneuf, one of the very best reporters on the State budget, does a good job writing about the latest numbers. You can go here to read that.
Links to Live By
- House and Republicans don’t plan on sitting the upcoming budget debates. Read more here.
- As we mentioned above the Environment Committee will be active and they have their sights set on plastics.
- Now it is official: CT pays the most in taxes to the federal government and we get the least back. Read more here.