State Representative Joe Gresko, (D)
121st Connecticut House District
Dear Neighbor,
After months of negotiations, the House of Representatives delivered a state budget that includes the largest income tax cut in the state’s history and significant increases in funding for local schools, also known as Education Cost Sharing (ECS) funds.
This balanced, bipartisan budget maintains our commitment to promoting fiscal responsibility and stability to continue strengthening our economy while delivering on key investments to support children, families, and seniors.
With this good budget stewardship and honoring the fiscal guardrails, we will maintain our excellent credit rating and pay down debt.
Key highlights:
- Deposits $3.3 billion into the Rainy Day Fund, helping us maintain a high credit rating and preparing us for any possible economic downfall.
- Pre-pays an additional $2.072 billion in unfunded pension liability.
- Includes the largest Personal Income Tax Cut in CT history ($190.6 million in FY 24 and $421.7 million in FY25).
- Exempts more retiree income from the state income tax.
- Continues our car tax cap
- Increases funding to towns – helping stabilize and lower local property taxes
- Continues property tax credits for homeowners
Supports Our Robust Safety Net Services by:
- Funding our nonprofit providers – 2.5% cost of living increases for critical service workers
- Providing funding to group home employees – roughly a 4.5% pay increase
- Making historic investments of over $30 million for residents with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)
We also make historic investments in local education through ECS funds, which helps reduce local property taxes and makes it easier for our urban schools to recruit and retain teachers as peer educators. Stratford will receive $27,243,762 in the 2024 fiscal year and $29,432,392 in the 2025 fiscal year.
In the coming weeks, I plan to share more details on provisions in the measure to help you understand what this means to you. I am looking forward to the Senate voting on this bill and moving forward to implementing it.
As always, please feel free to reach out to me at the Capitol at 860-842-0363 or email me at [email protected].
