By James Maroney
State Sen., D-14
James Maroney.
I think of my grandfather often, but I tend to think of him more during this time of year. I am writing this on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. My grandfather was a World War II Navy vet, and he enlisted because of the events at Pearl Harbor.
Some of my fondest memories as a child include my grandfather. Many of those memories are spending time with him on his boat. What I learned from being on that boat is that you need to plan before you turn a boat around. The bigger the boat is, the longer it takes to turn around.
The same can be said of governments. It takes a long time to turn them around. While in past years Connecticut’s finances haven’t been in the best shape, they are definitely starting to turn around. That is thanks to reforms that were initiated in the 2017 budget – a budget that my predecessor Sen. Gayle Slossberg was instrumental in shaping. Connecticut has begun to right its financial ship.
We currently have the fifth best rainy day fund in the country. In fact, because our rainy day fund is at its statutory maximum of 15 percent of the current budget, or $3.1 billion, this past year we made a $1.6 billion payment towards our unfunded pension liabilities. By doing so, we are estimated to save $3.45 billion in catch-up payments over the next 25 years. In addition, we are expected to pay off another $3.1 billion dollars in unfunded liabilities over the next two years. Those payments will save us hundreds of millions of dollars each year in payments toward our pensions.
Over the last several years, Connecticut has also been shrinking the size of government and reducing our annual borrowing and total outstanding debt. In fact, we are down to 1950s-levels of state employees and our workforce is over 19 percent lower – more than 6,000 fewer employees – than at the beginning of 2019.
These changes to Connecticut’s finances are not going unnoticed. Rating agencies have highlighted the state’s recent performance with credit upgrades in the spring of 2021. We were upgraded by all four major credit rating agencies. It feels good to be recognized for our hard work. Right now we are getting our finances in order and it’s a relief.
Recently I attended the Fiscal Accountability Report presentation, and while we are not completely out of the woods, we are only a few years away from eliminating structural deficits. There are still tough choices to be made and we need to maintain the discipline of the last several years, but at the presentation, the optimism of the budget professionals was clear. If we continue on the path we have paved, we are charting a path toward a brighter fiscal future for the state of Connecticut.