Gov. Ned Lamont vowed Tuesday to preserve his $300 million universal preschool plan amid growing uncertainly surrounding the state budget, cuts to federal funding and some lawmakers' desires to see a quicker return on the state's investments into child care.
As part of his budget proposal in February, Lamont announced his plan to invest $300 million in surplus revenue from this fiscal year into an off-budget endowment that would could be drawn from in later years to provide free or reduce-priced preschool for families earning under $150,000 a year.
Future surpluses could also be invested in the endowment, allowing it to grow, while withdrawals to support the program would be capped at 10% of the fund's balance each year — except for a one-time withdrawal of up to $30 million to get the program up and running next year.
During a round-table forum on child care issues in Hartford on Tuesday, Lamont said his plan remained undeterred by the state losing hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding — and potentially much more — under President Donald J. Trump's cutbacks, or the looming potential for an economic recession.
"It's an endowment," Lamont told reporters. "It's not going to be a drag if we have a recession; it's money that's always there. We're going to spend it prudently and make a big difference for these kids."
While the governor's office has predicted that the endowment could grow to over $1 billion in three years, Lamont did say Tuesday that those projections are dependent on returns from the state's capital gains tax, which would likely suffer in the event of a prolonged market downturn.
Lamont said while the state's revenues still appear to be in good shape for this fiscal year, write-offs from recent losses on the stock market could soon put a dent in the budget.
"Any time people say, 'I see, you know, nice surpluses as far as the eye can see,' they have rose-colored glasses on," Lamont said.
In addition to Lamont's plan, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have put forward their own proposals that would make bigger, more immediate expenditures on child care in the short term while expanding eligibility for families with infants and toddlers.
"I think that's something a lot of people want to have a conversation about, especially in light of some of the federal cuts that we've seen," said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford. "Maybe there's more we can do sooner, and maybe the endowment takes a couple years longer to get up and running."
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, however, Lamont described those proposals as being overly reliant on operating expenditures that are subject to fluctuations in tax revenues and lawmakers' desires to fund other programs.
The governor also critiqued a provision within one piece of legislation, Senate Bill 1369, that would raise payroll taxes on larger for-profit employers to fund child care programs, saying the idea "is probably not where I'd be."
Republicans, meanwhile, have criticized the mechanics of Lamont's proposal, which they say is a work-around to the state's budgetary spending cap that the governor himself has called "sacrosanct."
"Gov. Lamont says he wants to maintain fiscal discipline, but look at his actions. He is doing everything he can to violate the smart bipartisan guardrails that have served our state so well," Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, and Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, said in a joint statement on Tuesday.
The governor's plan, as well as the House and Senate bills, have passed initial votes in legislative committees. Ritter said he expected the three sides to get together and merge aspects of their respective plans into one proposal over the coming weeks.
Eva Bermúdez Zimmerman, the coalition director of Child Care for CT, said that while the governor's plan offers a "bold" investment in improving child care, it falls short in expanding care for children from birth to when they become eligible for preschool at age 3.
"Just doing preschool, it's not sufficient," Bermúdez Zimmerman said. "It's a portion of the fix to the crisis, but not the full fix."
As he departed from Tuesday's round table, Lamont said he got the same message from child care providers and other advocates who spoke, as well as from his Commissioner for the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, Beth Bye, though he did not announce any immediate plans to amend his proposal.
"Infant and toddler seem to be just as important in terms of development," Lamont said. "That's what I've heard from the professionals: start early and get going."
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
