Investments in child care that Gov. Ned Lamont hopes will eventually allow Connecticut to establish a universal preschool program formed the signature piece of his proposal for spending on human services in the coming biennium.
Lamont’s proposal would invest $300 million of the state’s surplus fund for fiscal year 2025 into a new Universal Preschool Endowment. Each subsequent year, certain surplus funding could be transferred into the endowment, with the state treasurer investing the money to increase profit.
But the proposal does not fully address the needs of other nonprofits who provide a slew of state services including food assistance, shelter for the homeless, therapeutic services, and aid for people with disabilities.
In addition to the endowment fund, the proposal includes $11.7 million for the state’s early care and education system. While advocates said they’re glad for the focus on child care, more investment will be needed to rescue the system. The system has been in crisis for years, as the cost of providing child care has risen, the industry struggles with workforce shortages and parents have been unable to access childcare for their young children.
The governor’s budget includes an additional $157 million over the next two years for nonprofit service providers. Nonprofits would receive $31 million the first year, with a boost of $126 million coming the following year. This allocation is in addition to the nearly $327 million the state offered nonprofits in fiscal year 2025.
Broken down, this means that in fiscal year 2026, nonprofits stand to receive about $358 million; in 2027, it will rise to nearly $453 million.
Providers received $50 million in one-time federal COVID relief dollars for this fiscal year, which will not be renewed. That means in fiscal year 2026, when they receive an additional $31 million, they’ll actually see a net loss in funding ahead of another increase in fiscal year 2027.
Lamont also proposed adding rental assistance vouchers for senior citizens and people with disabilities, as well as a $5 million allocation for eviction prevention and additional funding for the homeless system’s response to cold weather.
The judicial and prisons systems will see some cuts, notably slashing $3.5 million from the budget by charging incarcerated people a fee to send emails and other electronic messages. The governor proposed spending $52.5 million to build a new facility at Whiting Forensic Hospital, the state’s inpatient care setting for people with acute mental health needs who have been involved in crimes.
The governor also wants to place tighter restrictions on who is eligible for public defender services, saving about $6 million. Current law says anyone earning up to 250% of the federal poverty level has the right to a public defender; Lamont wants to change that to 200%.
Child care
Lamont said Wednesday during his annual budget address that he wants to focus on child care to help families participate in the workforce. High costs and difficulty accessing care can make it hard for many parents and guardians, particularly women, to hold jobs.
“For countless families, the cost of child care is not only burdensome, but keeps them out of the workforce,” Lamont said.
Office of Policy and Management Secretary Jeffrey Beckham said phasing in universal preschool offers the state a chance to build a system and train a workforce. The early care and education system has struggled to recruit and retain workers for the past few years.
Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye said the early rollout of universal preschool will be focused on the highest-need families and in areas with a lack of access to childcare, particularly Eastern Connecticut and the Litchfield County area.
“It supports both the goal of making sure all kids have access to preschool, plus that parents can work,” Bye said.
Advocates for early childhood support and child care had mixed reactions to Lamont’s proposed budget.
Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, the director of Child Care for CT, said it was a rare moment when “we are the belle of the ball. Early education, child care is getting the attention that has been needed for the past 20, 30 years.”
In 2023, a “Blue Ribbon Panel” was tasked with creating a plan to improve early childhood education. The resulting plan recommended a five year overhaul at a cost of $2 billion.
Wednesday’s proposal by the governor wasn’t nearly as ambitious, proposing universal pre-K rather than support for all children under kindergarten age. Preschool includes children ages 3 and 4, but not babies or toddlers. But it was an important step, Bermudez Zimmerman said. “No matter how you dice it, $300 million is a start.”
Rep. Corey Paris, D-Stamford, was pleasantly surprised by the amount of money allocated to early childhood education. He explained the importance of funding pre-school learning, for both young children and their families.
“I think it’s going to be really important for families to be further enabled to go back to work,” Paris said. He added that access to pre-school is “better for kids in terms of their development and going into the K-12 system.”
In addition to supporting children’s behavioral and social development to ensure they are ready to start school with their peers, early childhood supports are needed because they are a critical workforce issue, said Chris DiPentima, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association.
“Expanding access to affordable childcare is critical for the business community, especially to get more women back in the workforce,” he said.
DiPentima was a member of the Blue Ribbon Panel, which studied the impact of universal pre-K elsewhere and was optimistic it would free up parents to go back to work.
Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, disagreed with the funding sources Lamont wants to use to fuel the state’s spending in areas such as early childhood education.
“We would have supported spending $30 million on pre-K, just within the confines of the budget,” Harding said. “Instead, [Lamont] created his slush fund, essentially, as an excuse to fund pre-K.”
Nonprofits
In his budget address, the governor recognized the importance of mental health providers, particularly.
“We will never forget the most vulnerable, and health is often impacted by environment. Let’s make sure that those with addiction and mental health needs are taken care of, starting with a place they can call home,” Lamont said.
Gian Carl Casa, president of the CT Nonprofit Community Alliance said that if nonprofits have a budget cut in the next fiscal year, “programs will shrink, jobs will be lost, people will lose care.”
“After nearly two decades of underfunding, nonprofit providers cannot absorb a cut, especially when federal funding is threatened and the state is projecting the eighth annual budget surplus,” Carl Casa said in an emailed statement. “Nonprofits are in crisis.”
Among the nonprofits most stretched are the homelessness service providers who have been tasked with serving more people as the homeless population increases. They asked for $33.5 million in the state budget, but the governor’s proposal falls far short of that, with an additional $5 million allocated for eviction prevention and regional homeless service providers as well as $4.5 million annually for cold weather services.
Connecticut Foodshare, the state’s largest food bank, also asked for vastly more money than the governor’s budget allots. Their state allocation will be doubled, with about $900,000 in additional funding for the program annually.
During his budget presentation Wednesday, Beckham said that he had arrived at doubling the allocation for Connecticut Foodshare’s budget because “double sounded good to me.”
Connecticut Foodshare has said it needs $10 million dollars to feed an extraordinary number of people who are relying on food pantries to supplement their food.
The program also won’t see a significant increase until July of 2026 under the governor’s budget.
Jason Jakubowski, president of Connecticut Foodshare, said he is appreciative of the increase but concerned it doesn’t meet the growing need for food assistance.
“We’re seeing COVID-era lines. Lines have increased by about 10 percent across the state and in some places they’re double and even triple,” Jakubowski said. “Our pantries need more food now. They can’t wait 18 months in order to get that increase.”
Paris, the Stamford representative, was less than pleased about the amount of money allocated to fighting hunger.
“I think $900,000 is not enough to feed Connecticut,” he said. “We need to make sure that people are fed, and we need to make sure that we’re keeping down those rates that would end up raising the disparities in terms of poverty across the state.”
The governor’s proposal would also fund free breakfast for school children.
Paris said that sending kids to school fed is also essential, although universal free breakfast was not included in this year’s budget. “I am a little concerned in terms of the timing,” he said.
“We need to be making sure that kids are eating right now and not waiting to feed kids.”
Housing
Lamont’s proposal would both increase the amount of money allocated to the state’s Rental Assistance Program and increase the number of vouchers it distributes, to account for the increasing cost of rent.
“Strong demand and little inventory here in Connecticut are driving up housing prices, driving up rents, and driving up homelessness,” Lamont said.
Rep. Joe Zullo, R-East Haven, the ranking member of the Planning and Development Committee, said he appreciates the governor’s intention to expand rental assistance vouchers, but believes more needs to be done.
“While I haven’t had a chance to fully review the Governor’s budget, I was hoping to hear more about a road map for addressing the State’s housing shortage,” Zullo said.
Housing Committee Chair Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said he thinks the budget is a good starting point, but there’s more work to be done around the rental assistance program and resolving homelessness.
“We’ll work from there,” he said.
Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, said he also wants to see more homelessness funding.
“He spoke about supportive housing to address homelessness, but that hasn’t been a priority for the Appropriations Committee in recent years,” Scott said.
Judicial
Beckham said the decision to charge incarcerated people to send emails stemmed from the need to balance the budget in both years. He also said placing new limitations on who qualifies for public defender services puts Connecticut more in line with other states.
Judiciary Committee Co-Chair Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, said that he is confused by Lamont’s proposals and disappointed that the Connecticut prisons communication program, instituted in 2021, was already being walked back. “It does not make sense to me for the plan to have such a short lifespan”, he said.
He said that while he was not surprised by the majority of the budget, it seemed to be lacking in vision for the future.
“If it was me, I would want to see that,” he said.
He said he is disappointed about the new income limit for public defenders, qualifying that he wants to “seek answers.”
Rep. Craig Fishbein, R-Wallingford, and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, expressed moderate satisfaction with the parts of the budget that touch his committee. He said that it was largely as he expected.
Fishbein said the governor made a difficult choice to remove free messaging for incarcerated people, with this being “particularly difficult around the holidays.” He said that the free messaging would have eased the burden for families, like his own, who used to huddle around one phone to speak to incarcerated relatives.
Asked about the change in income limits for public defenders, Fishbein said he was disappointed “I am always fearful for the individual who has to face the justice system without knowledge,” he concluded.