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I'm Mark Sudall. Welcome back to Power and Politics. Connecticut State Comptroller Sean Scalen joins us now. Welcome to the program. Good to be here. Let's start off with the state budget. We know a little bit more about that here as the legislative session is about ready to end. Talk about that and the impact on our residents. Well, the governor and the legislature have about one week to go to balance the budget, and there is rumors that they've gotten to an agreement. We haven't seen the white smoke yet, uh, but from all I know from talking to both of them, I think we're gonna have yet. Another balanced budget that continues Connecticut's fiscal progress makes some of the investments that people want to see to make sure their schools have the money they need, our roads have the money that they need, and moves Connecticut forward as the governor and the legislature have been working on for the last few years, as you know, the Republicans are going to argue about the guardrails, right, and maybe exceeding that budget. You know, look, we have gotten Connecticut to a much better place. 10 years ago we were in a fiscal crisis. Today we've ended that crisis, but we have a new crisis of affordability where healthcare, housing, childcare, all these things cost too much money. And the challenge that the governor is facing is to try to find a way to continue our fiscal progress while also tackling the affordability crisis. I think that he has found a way to do that. Do we have to be a little bit of adaptive when it comes to our guard rails? I think we do, but are the guard rails still very much there and. Do they need to be? Yes they do. I think we have to find a balance and I bet you they're gonna do it. All right, what about the federal budget and and how that's gonna trickle down to Connecticut? Well, look, we began the year as I just said, focused on, hey, we've made a lot of fiscal progress now we got to tackle the affordability crisis. How do we do that? Our job has been made harder by the changing politics of Washington, right? To date we've seen hundreds of millions of dollars of federal cuts. Just a couple of days ago, Congress passed a big bill that will make things more expensive for the people of Connecticut, and as a result of these changing policies, it's now going to be harder for us to do what we want to do and what the people of Connecticut want us to do because we're seeing less money come from Washington. We're seeing policies changing that make things like health care more affordable because that bill. Takes millions of Americans off of Medicaid, makes things like SNAP benefits, food assistance for the neediest people in our community, takes that off the table, right? And so whether it's the impact that tariff policy is having on our economy or these new changing bills coming from Washington, things are going to be more expensive at a time when people are asking us on a bipartisan basis in Connecticut to make their lives more affordable. What are you hoping comes out of this legislative session? I hope that we can, like I said, continue that fiscal progress, make Connecticut more affordable, and for me that means going after those root cost drivers that are making life more expensive. Energy is something we talk a lot about in politics today. People are frustrated by the high cost of energy. They want to see us working to lower the cost of energy. There will be a bill this year that will tackle this, but we have to keep making progress. Child care is another great example as a. Out of two young kids, my wife and I pay almost as much for our mortgage as we do for childcare. That's crazy. It's unaffordable for most families. The governor put forward a really big bold proposal this year to guarantee universal access to the childcare in Connecticut for everybody in our state, and I think it's an admirable goal that we have to continue to work towards, but we have a lot more work to do. Now I find this interesting and not something you expect. Hear from the state comptroller, but you recently published an examination on firefighters. Tell us what you learned from that. Well, my grandfather was a firefighter. My dad was a police officer, so I've always been interested to support our first responders, and we did this big survey of firefighters in Connecticut because they're at a crisis point, 60% reduction in the number of volunteer firefighters in our state in just over 10 years. So my office as the CFO of the state sometimes digs into the weeds on issues that may not seem like they're in the controller's purview, but when we talk about the fiscal health of our state and the safety of our state, it's important to make sure they're at the table we put forward some ideas of how we can make that better. And at the end of the day all of us, uh, you know, need to make sure that firefighters are always there for us. We got to be there for them, and this is that process. Now, uh, Medicaid checks just went out this week and of course we talked with you a few weeks back when you were in Danbury talking about this with uh with Johanna Hayes. Um, what else can be done here in the state, you know, so folks can still be getting these checks? Well, look, Medicaid is health insurance for a million of the most vulnerable residents of our state. It's seniors in nursing homes, kids, it's, you know. Women that are experiencing childbirth, right, this is a really, really vulnerable set of people that we want to make sure that they have the health care coverage they need. What just passed in Washington jeopardizes that health care coverage, and we will have to make a decision pretty soon of whether the state will use our substantial rainy day fund of $4 billion to step in to backfill what is now being cut from Washington. There are a lot of those cuts that are happening right now, and what we need to do is sort of understand the totality of them and figure out what the state is in a position to do. But in my opinion, Mark, we have got to make sure that health insurance and health care for these most vulnerable people is something that we do continue even if Washington is not going to be doing it. And about the 30 seconds we have left, there are a lot of those child care rallies across the state, um, and it seems like we're making some progress in Hartford with this too. Yeah, listen, for the average family in the state of Connecticut, childcare is one of the biggest expenses that they have and one of the biggest things they want us to solve. I think we're going to take a big step forward by passing the governor's proposal to create universal. in the state, but we still have a lot of work left to do to make sure every kid in our state gets the education that they deserve, and that education starts at age 0 and goes to age 5 until they start kindergarten. We've got a lot of work left to do, but we can make it more affordable and we need to. Sean, thank you so much. Good to see you. Good to see you. Well, next, it was a close call this week for people receiving Medicaid checks.

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A crisis has been averted. Husky Medicaid checks did go out this week. This was after a last minute agreement between Governor Lamont and fellow Democrats to cover a $300 million budget deficit, but Republicans don't like it. News 12 Connecticut's John Craven tells us why. Republicans say this deal is a gimmick that busts the state's spending cap, but it also means nearly a million Medicaid patients won't miss a doctor's appointment. Without a deal, husky Medicaid checks would be delayed until July. Some clinics wouldn't be able to pay their workers. It's all because Connecticut's Medicaid program is deep in the red. To plug the hole, Governor Lamotte is declaring a fiscal emergency. The move lets state lawmakers exceed the state's spending cap and move hundreds of millions of dollars into next year's budget. When you prepay your Medicaid deficiency in cash like we're going to do that will free up. Operating surplus from fiscal year 25 that you can carry forward to fiscal year 26 and spend. If that all sounds complicated, Republicans think so too. Republicans understand that 11 equals 2. The Democrats in the state of Connecticut think 1 + 1 equals $300 million for them to spend on whatever they want to spend. GOP lawmakers think it's a slippery slope that will lead to more spending. And higher taxes. What he is doing today is telling all of you back home, your taxes are being raised, but Governor Lamont insists this is a one-time fix. I'm pretty strong about we're not going to raise taxes. I'm going to hold the line. On our our spending cap and that's what we're doing in 206 and 27 and beyond. Now, as for the rest of the state budget, lawmakers are hoping to vote by late next week, but they might be back this fall to make adjustments depending on how much the Fed's cut. John Craven, News 12, Connecticut. Well, that's all our time. I'm Mark Suddall. Thanks for watching.

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Connecticut Office of the State Comptroller Sean Scanlon joined the Power & Politics to talk about issues affecting your money, including - state budget and impacts. 

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