Professors and students from Connecticut’s state colleges and universities are calling for $160 million to bolster the state’s universities and community colleges ahead of the upcoming legislative session, which is generally used for budget adjustments.
Citing rising tuition costs for students, deteriorating conditions in university dorm rooms and larger class sizes, the professors, and students – led by Connecticut State University Association of American University Professors (CSU-AAUP) – decried “cuts” to university and college funding in last year’s budget deal.
“We are facing a crisis in higher education that is entirely unnecessary and extremely hurtful,” said CSU-AAUP President and professor of history at Central Connecticut State University Louise Williams. “We understand that our governor and legislators want to be responsible with state finances but, at a certain point, the spending cap and budget guardrails they genuflect in front of simply go too far. They’ve become a brake on progress.”
Williams said that last year’s budget undercut the Connecticut State College and University System (CSCU) by $140 million, necessitating increased tuition at state higher education schools, cutting staff and services.
“Last year in his biennial budget, the governor turned his back on progress,” Williams said. “He did not allocate enough money to support public higher education adequately.”
The governor and General Assembly face an onslaught of public agencies and nonprofits seeking increased funding this year following two years of funding bolstered by federal COVID-relief funds. Connecticut’s budget is just $11 million under the spending cap, meaning there is very little room to increase funding without cutting from somewhere else, or by adjusting those fiscal guardrails, including the volatility cap in particular.
The fiscal guardrails established by the bi-partisan budget deal of 2017 is credited by many, including Gov. Ned Lamont and Comptroller Sean Scanlon, as putting Connecticut on better financial footing and paying down some of its long-term debt, thus freeing up money in the budget for programs and services.
Although lawmakers voted last year to extend the budget guardrails for at least another five years, Senate President Pro-Tem Martin Looney, D-New Haven, thinks the guardrails can be maintained but adjusted to free up needed funds, including adjusting the revenue threshold that forms the basis for the volatility cap.
Under the volatility cap, surplus revenues collected from volatile Wall Street earnings are funneled to Connecticut’s budget reserve fund and then into paying down the state’s pension debt. However, where that revenue threshold is placed determines the amount of surplus revenue. Looney suggested raising that threshold.
“We need to have a spending cap; we need to have guardrails, but they need to be able to be adjusted from time to time to reflect needs that occur and become more pressing over time. We cannot be frozen in amber like a prehistoric insect from 2017,” Looney said, highlighting a series by CT Mirror on the fiscal guardrails. “One of the things we could do… is to look at the threshold for the volatility cap. There may in fact be room to adjust that threshold.”
The Board of Regents which governs the CSCU system has already implemented a deficit mitigation plan, which included a 5 percent tuition raise and the reduction of staff, but they are asking for an additional $47.6 million to address remaining deficits under their plan, but advocates say it’s not nearly enough.
“The extraordinary level of mitigation planned for FY25 represents three quarters of an exceptionally large projected deficit. We believe that this is as far as we can go before taking more drastic—and harmful—steps,” wrote Terrence Cheng, chancellor for CSCU.
Looney also suggest possibly moving more items outside the spending cap, like aid to distressed municipalities, a point of contention during negotiations on the spending cap in 2017.
“That is something that I would support and proposed as a bill last year,” Looney said. “Those are couple of the things that could be done in a practical way to free up some room. Obviously, those would require the cooperation of the governor and also 60 percent vote of the General Assembly.”
Part of the needed funds for the colleges and universities, however, is needed to cover $1.9 billion in pay raises awarded to unionized state employees negotiated in 2022 and passed by the General Assembly. The Lamont administration pushed back against outcry over the 2023 budget, citing lower enrollment numbers for the CSCU system and saying that they have increased appropriated funds for higher education.
But with a number of different agencies seeking increased appropriations, making budget adjustments could become a balancing act, one that Williams said they are unwilling to accept.
“We also will not accept that our state cannot address one need without sacrificing another,” Williams said. “It seems that the worship of abstractions, of spending caps and guardrails, is more important than our students.”
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