Christine Stuart Photo
Mayor DeStefano (at left) listens as Gov. Malloy vows.
New Haven’s projected budget gap for the coming fiscal year suddenly dropped from $42 million to $31 million Wednesday after a promise from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
Malloy told the mayors of Connecticut’s three largest cities that he found enough money in his budget to hold them harmless for the loss of federal stimulus funds, which helped prop up the Education Cost Sharing grant last year.
Malloy promised on the campaign trail to make sure the state pays its share of ECS funding but backed off that stance shortly after taking office last month.
As he grapples with a $3.67 billion budget deficit, Malloy said definitively Wednesday that he has found the $540 million the state needs in order to hold municipalities harmless for the anticipated 14 percent reduction in ECS funding over the next two years.
“I think it is worth saying something obvious…it’s good to have people mean what they say,” New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said.
Mayoral spokesman Adam Joseph said the resulting recalculation of the upcoming year’s city budget gap depends on “a large number of variables still out there.”
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