When Connecticut legislators get back to work Wednesday as the 2026 legislative session opens, they’ll have just 13 weeks to address the issues facing the state, including affordability and federal budget cuts.
Gov. Ned Lamont plans to cut taxes for small businesses and the legislature still has more than $300 million in emergency funds that can be allocated to plug expected federal budget cuts.
Lawmakers will be scrambling to pass bills because the 13-week session will be among the shortest in state history, based on the nuances of the calendar that sets the adjournment date for May 6. Both the governor’s office and all 187 legislative seats are up for re-election this year, which often impacts the legislation as lawmakers want to bring good news back to their constituents.
Lamont and legislators are touting the state’s financial position, which is far improved from the days of large deficits and regular tax increases. Today, the state has a rainy day fund of more than $4 billion for fiscal emergencies and remaining money from a special fund that was created in a bipartisan fashion to combat budget cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. The most recent allocation will include $4.5 million to public schools in Hartford, Waterbury, and New Haven after federal grants had been canceled by Trump.
“We will go into session with over $300 million available to deal with whatever chaos comes that’s going to make life unaffordable for our families,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter of Hartford, who oversees the Democratic caucus that controls the state House of Representatives. “We have over $300 million to address problems that occur not of our own making, but that are forced upon us by Washington. … We’re the only state that did it [with an emergency fund], and we did it really, really well. We are a shining example to the country.”
Lamont is calling for tax cuts for small businesses by allowing pass-through entities to receive tax credits for research and development that are now only available for larger corporations under state law. The proposal represents a victory for the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, which has been pushing the idea for years and earmarked it as a top priority this year. The small businesses must have less than $70 million in sales, and they would need to apply to the state economic development commissioner to receive the credit. The savings would be an estimated $25 million for the small businesses.
“This is a great way to level the playing field,” said Christopher Davis, a former Republican state legislator who is now CBIA’s public policy director. “They have to do the research and development in Connecticut.”
Lamont has declined to reveal full details on some issues, saying they will be in his budget documents. One of the issues being explored is helping residents with energy costs after a brutally cold January.
“I feel like I have to do something short term,” Lamont told the business crowd in Hartford. “Maybe there’s a one-time energy rebate we can provide folks.”
State budget
In his remarks to about 400 business leaders last week at the CBIA economic summit, Lamont painted a relatively rosy financial picture after operating surpluses the past seven straight years allowed the state to pay down $10 billion in debt for the long-underfunded pension plans for state employees and public school teachers. The pension plans were once funded at only 35%, he said, but that number has now been boosted to 60 to 65%.
“But this is no time to be whistling ‘Happy Days are Here Again,’ ” Lamont told the crowd, asking them to speak with legislators and “remind them that recessions do happen.”
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora says that Lamont will not adopt Trump’s ideas of “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime,” meaning that those items would still be taxable under the Connecticut state income tax.
“The governor has rejected that,” Candelora told reporters at the state Capitol.
A spokesman for Lamont’s budget office said Lamont cannot enact tax changes unilaterally and any changes would be subject to final approval by the General Assembly.
Candelora said he wants to make sure that the legislature has a stronger role in allocating the money from the emergency fund, which had been handled largely by the governor in the off-session.
Among the issues facing the General Assembly in the next three months are:
Allowing citizens to sue ICE
Prompted by the recent shootings in Minneapolis, state Senate Democrats are calling for a new state civil rights law that would allow Connecticut citizens to sue federal immigration agents. The measure would permit civil lawsuits against federal officials if citizens believed that their civil rights had been violated.
California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois have all passed similar measures, and legislation is also pending in New York and Colorado. While the issue is relatively new in some states, the senators noted that California’s law is more than 30 years old.
Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney of New Haven said the measure is a top priority for the Democrats who control the Senate chamber.
Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield says the measure should be debated, adding that protests must be peaceful and the recent violence in Minneapolis must end. Lamont supports the idea, but said it would likely be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gov. Ned Lamont is joining with state Rep. Gary Turco, far left, and state attorney general William Tong in helping children avoid problems with social media. Here, Lamont speaks at Newington town hall on a separate issue with Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and state tax commissioner Mark Boughton. (Christopher Keating/Courant)
Protecting kids on social media
With children increasingly glued to their cell phones, lawmakers are pushing a detailed bill that would reduce children’s exposure to addictive algorithms and notifications without parental consent, along with creating default settings for children’s accounts.
Studies have shown that the addictive nature, likened to “behavioral cocaine,” of social media is having an impact on the mental health of children and teenagers. The algorithm-driven feeds and repeated notifications keep students addicted to their phones, with some teens hooked more than others.
State Rep. Gary Turco, vice chairman of the legislature’s general law committee, will spearhead the measure that is being pushed by Lamont and state Attorney General William Tong.
A similar bill was passed last year by 121-26 on a bipartisan basis by the House, but the measure never received a final vote in the Senate as time expired on the regular session. This year, lawmakers are vowing to cross the finish line for the bill, which was known last year as House Bill 6857 – An Act Concerning the Attorney General’s Recommendations Regarding Social Media and Minors.
Electric rates
While lawmakers spent months last year debating over electricity rates under legislation known as Senate Bill 4, Republicans said they are still not satisfied with the “public benefits charge” that boosts electric bills. Legislators are expected to keep talking about Connecticut’s electricity charges, which traditionally rank third in the United States behind Hawaii and California.
Republicans have pushed hard to move the public benefits charge off the electric bills and onto the state’s $27 billion annual budget, but Lamont has consistently said that maneuver is a shell game that simply switches the bill from the ratepayers to the taxpayers.
“For my business alone, we saw a $75,000 increase in our electric bill over four months that we had to absorb last year that we didn’t budget for,” said Candelora, who operates a recreational complex. “That is dramatic. I think the issue needs a lot more attention because it really has become unsustainable.”
Harding said it is an unfair, regressive form of taxation as poor families in Bridgeport pay the same rate for the public benefits charge as do billionaires in Greenwich.
“If people want to continue to look at those benefits charges … and the example of a Bridgeport family versus a billionaire family, I’m all ears,” Ritter responded. “Give the five new commissioners of PURA — give them a chance.”
Looney agreed that he “would support exploring more of that as well” on the public benefits charges if the legislature can find a way to help poor families in Bridgeport and other communities.
House Republican leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford and Senate Republican leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield are both concerned about the high cost of electricity in Connecticut that traditionally ranks as the third highest in the nation. Here, they are shown last year during Gov. Ned Lamont’s annual budget speech in the historic Hall of the House. (Jessica Hill/Special to The Courant)
Small liquor bottles – nips
Another issue returning this year is how to deal with the sale of miniature liquor bottles that are commonly known as nips. The possibilities include banning them outright, placing a 10-cent deposit on them or allowing the towns to decide in the same way that municipalities currently decide whether to allow retail sales of recreational marijuana.
In the past, none of the options on nips has been adopted, and the current situation is that customers pay 5 cents per nip bottle to generate money that is eventually distributed to the cities and towns.
But the state’s package stores association has said for years that banning nips has legal problems because a town cannot arbitrarily decide which types of alcohol can be sold. A town, for example, could not ban beer that is sold in cans but then allow bottled beer and all other types of alcohol to be sold, according to the association.
“These bottles lead to pollution on land and sea, contribute to alcohol abuse, and are easy to conceal and discard while driving,” said Rep. Mary Mushinsky, a Wallingford Democrat who was first elected in 1980 and is the longest-serving House member. “I will continue to push for legislation that either prohibits the sale of nips or allows municipalities to prohibit sale within their borders.”
Cities and towns have been collecting money from the surcharge on miniature liquor bottles that are known as “nips.” Some lawmakers want to ban the sale outright or allow towns to decide if the product can be sold. Here, Bob Dargan purchases a pack of nip bottles from Mina Patel at the Grog Shop liquor store in 2019 in Meriden.
Garbage disposal
One of the biggest long-term problems facing the state on a long-term basis is what to do with all of the garbage that is generated seven days a week, 365 days a year. The legislature is not expected to solve the difficult problem during a short, three-month session in an election year.
In the short term, the solution for Connecticut has been to send the trash to landfills in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio but no long term plan has been decided.
For 35 years, the answer involved burning the trash and making money by generating electricity and selling it. But the problem came when the energy prices collapsed during a 10-year period from 12 cents per kilowatt hour to only three cents. With that price collapse, the Hartford trash-to-energy plant could not generate sufficient money — and the towns needed to pay additional “tipping” fees to cover the shortfall.
“I wish we had an easy solution,” Ritter said. “It’s puzzling to me that on the environmental side, we have a hard time getting agreement on what to do, yet we’re trucking it to Ohio. On the other side, we have a hard time trying to figure out how to pay for it. It’s complicated. We tried these food-scrap programs, which I knew would never work because people have to pay for it. We’ve got to keep working at it. People, at some point, are going to have to step up.”
Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com
