NEW BRITAIN, Conn. (WTNH) — A few years after former President Jimmy Carter’s term ended, he made a trip to New Britain.  

In 1985, about 3,000 people gathered at Central Connecticut State University’s Welte Hall to hear the former president deliver the annual Robert C. Vance Lecture.  

This lecture series ran from 1983 to 2015 to honor the editor, publisher and journalist for The Herald in New Britain, Robert C. Vance.  

In addition to giving a speech, Carter was also awarded the university’s first honorary degree.  

The university’s archivist, Renata Vickery, said, “it was also important for our students to see someone who started from the very humble beginning.” 

This is the last of a six-part series on the constitutionality of the state’s “budget guardrails.” Here are Parts One, Two, Three, Four and Five.

If Connecticut’s budget guardrail statutes were determined to be unconstitutional, what are the implications for state budget policy? The following outcomes seem most likely and desirable:

1. The guardrails statute in Public Act 23-1 would revert to the status of ordinary legislation, amendable by majority votes and subject to gubernatorial veto.

2. The spending cap in the Connecticut Constitution, including the three-fifths vote “escape clause” and the three adopted definitions in state statute, would remain in force without alteration.

3. The three-fifths supermajority vote requirement in the guardrail statutes would be severable from the remainder of the statute.

4. Absent the severed supermajority vote provisions and the nullified bond covenant, the remainder of the fiscal statutes would continue to be implemented as currently done by the Office of Fiscal Analysis and the Office of Policy and Management, unless and until these statutes are amended.

5. The priority funding of the rainy day fund and prepayment of pension debt would continue under the status quo, unless and until amended by law.

6. The budget impacts of revising the guardrails will be determined by future actions of lawmakers. All the statutory caps in P.A. 23-1 could be amended by a majority vote except to the extent covered by the constitutional spending cap in article Third, Sec. 18c.

7. The General Assembly and governor would be expected to carefully project how their fiscal decisions going forward will impact Wall Street’s credit rating agencies.

8. The bond lock should be recognized as “null and void” by legislative repeal or by exercising the “escape clause” to avoid unintended consequences.

9. The State Treasurer should seek immediate legislation relieving him of the obligation to insert the bond lock covenant in future bond sales.

10. Assuming that there is at least some consensus of good faith acknowledgement of constitutional flaws in the statutory guardrails, the threshold question of whether any changes should be made will have been definitively answered, allowing everyone to move on. In response, House Speaker Matt Ritter, Senate President Martin Looney and Gov. Ned Lamont might convene an “all parties” negotiation to address post-guardrail changes to the FY 26-27 state budget and to hammer out new flexible fiscal policies to replace the old inflexible statutory guardrails.

The prospects for a successful negotiation seem high despite current bickering because there is ample political and policy consensus that some level of fiscal controls should remain in place. The CT Voices report and the Yale Tobin/Connecticut Project report both propose sensible fiscal revisions, but neither group advocate for eliminating fiscal controls all together. Governor Lamont in particular should take credit for the fact that “guardrails” of some type have now become a permanent part of Connecticut’s fiscal infrastructure because of his insistence.

The General Assembly should now approve what it neglected to do in 2017 or in 2023: adopt a “best practices” approach by establishing a new permanent Fiscal Commission of budget experts, stakeholders, and representatives of municipal, business and nonprofit leaders, to monitor on a regular basis the productivity, responsiveness and efficiency of ongoing fiscal policies. The Commission’s reports should contain fiscal analysis on the authoritative level of the OFA’s Fiscal Accountability Reports and recommendations on the data-driven policy level of the recent guardrail reports from the Yale Tobin Center and CT Voices for Children.

Consequences for bond purchasers

What might be the legal consequences for bondholders and the state if the bond lock covenant is unconstitutional?

Experienced bond counsel would need to be consulted about extracting the state from these entanglements. The following assurances could minimize if not eliminate any serious risk to the state from a bondholder lawsuit.

First, bondholder investments are sufficiently protected under the conventional bond covenant from the State of Connecticut to pay principal and interest on the bonds, guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the state. The primary security pledge received by the bondholders has not been impaired.

Second, bondholders will still receive extra protection from the risks of the normal state budgeting cycle by the constitutional spending cap which exempts in article Third, Sec. 18b “expenditures for the payment of bonds, notes or other evidences of indebtedness” from the cap.

Third, the exercise of a public entity’s sovereignty in limited circumstances has been upheld by courts as a defense or justification for post-sale changes to bond covenants. A well-known example excused a municipality’s non-performance with its pledge to dedicate casino revenues to pay bondholder debt service after the city’s approval of construction of a new casino was rejected by a voter referendum. A finding of unconstitutionality would leave the debt service obligation intact even if the bond lock were nullified.

Fourth and most importantly, the General Assembly was never constitutionally authorized under the “anti-delegation legislative rule” to issue the bond lock covenant in the first place. There is no “breach” for damages if the covenant was void from the start and there is no claim for “damage” if the debt service is paid.

Fifth, future assessments by Wall Street’s credit rating agencies will largely depend on the budget policies adopted in the post-guardrail period. No other state has adopted a bond lock covenant. Wall Street has welcomed Connecticut’s fiscal results but has not been clamoring for other states to replicate the bond lock.

Sixth, a final option for the state to extricate itself from the any bond covenant contract disputes without even the appearance of a technical default is for the General Assembly and the governor to exercise the bond covenant’s procedural “escape clause” for each of the remaining fiscal years on the 2024-2028 covenants and not to renew the covenants in 2029 for the optional second five years.

Conclusion and a note of judicial caution

In this series of opinion essays I have presented a “big picture” analysis of the unconstitutionality of the budget guardrails to stimulate the kind of legal research and discussion that regrettably has been avoided since 2017. As an obvious caveat, these essays were never intended to take the place of a legal brief.

Asking a Connecticut court to declare a state statute unconstitutional can be a daunting task. A 1986 court ruling stated: “It is well settled that a party who challenges a statute on constitutional grounds has no easy burden, for every intendment will be made in favor of constitutionality, and invalidity must be established beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That is why, in the end, it is my hope is that without formal judicial intervention the General Assembly and the governor will find either in these essays or in a legal opinion from the Attorney General or in an advisory opinion from the Legislative Commissioner’s Office enough of a persuasive legal rationale to conclude that the Connecticut Constitution requires a different process to adopt future state budgets, unencumbered by questionable statutory budget guardrails that may be out of date or out of order.

Seeking to have the guardrails recognized as unconstitutional is a weighty matter not to be undertaken frivolously. But continuing to adopt state budgets outside of the bedrock rules enshrined in the state constitution also carries serious risks and is likely to cause damage to trust in government and lead to more factional disunity.

Although the guardrails deserve their share of recognition for addressing the depleted rainy day fund and advancing payments of pension debt, let’s not forget that fiscal performance improved in every state between 2021 and 2023. During that period, 48 states cut taxes, and many built up their rainy day funds. Only Connecticut imposed a bond lock.

Connecticut does not need to choose between respecting its Constitution and enacting fiscally responsible budgets. It can and should do both. The statutes, guardrails and budgets reviewed in this opinion series are important elements of governing, but in the end the most precious commitment that all state elected officials make is the oath they take to “support” the Connecticut Constitution.

Governor Ned Lamont said his goal of making Connecticut more affordable will require long-term solutions to fix long-standing problems.

Still, he also hopes to find short-term relief for families struggling to make ends meet.

“You want to bring down the price of electricity,” Lamont said during a one-on-one interview with NBC Connecticut. “You need more supply, you want to bring down the price of housing, you need supply.”

Lamont’s State of the State address focused on the price of many essentials, including electricity, housing and prescription drugs.

He admitted the state can do little to help with groceries, though.

” I don’t want to over promise,” he said. “There’s not much I can do about eggs.”

Lamont did make energy prices a major focus, noting the frustration customers had after surging electricity bills during the summer.

Lamont reiterated Thursday that the state needs to focus on increasing supply – something that could take years.

He defended purchasing more expensive green energy to boost supply in the short-term. Lamont also said he’s trying to get hydropower from Canada.

“That’s something that worries because I don’t have control over it,” he said. “I’m talking to the energy generators, I’m talking to the Trump administration. I’ll be seeing what we can do to get more energy here.”

He also defended the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) and Chairman Marissa Gillette, who has been the target of criticism from energy suppliers and Republicans who feel she’s been too heavy-handed.

“Marissa’s really good,” Lamont said. “She holds Eversource accountable. They don’t like that.”

He also said the state needs to boost its housing supply.

He’s made funding for housing – including grants for construction and help for first-time buyers – a priority, but now, he’s pushing lawmakers to speed up local permitting processes.

Lamont said that’s not an invitation to mandate zoning reform.

As Lamont crafts his budget proposal for lawmakers, he’s watching what happens down in Washington, D.C. 

The governor’s proposal is due in February, but the current federal spending plan expires in March.

Lamont and lawmakers are worried the Republican-held Congress and President-Elect Donald Trump will cut funding for Medicaid, education and other federal aid.

While he waits, Lamont will receive pressure from Democrats to relax the state’s fiscal guardrails. The governor said he’ll listen, but doesn’t think the state is ready to make major changes.

“Look, we’ll see,” he said. “We’ve paid down by the end of this year, say, $10 billion of pension. We’ve gone from the worst-funded pension system in the country to below average. Below average is not good enough to me.”

Lamont said he plans to work with the Trump administration but vows not to budge on certain policies, including immigration.

America First Legal, founded by Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Miller, recently sent a letter to Lamont pressuring him to comply with Trump’s deportation plan.

The letter said the group had identified Connecticut as a “sanctuary jurisdiction,” something that “subjects you [Lamont] and your subordinates to significant risk to criminal or civil liability.”

Lamont said he doesn’t want to see changes to Connecticut’s immigration policy. The Trust Act states Connecticut agencies do not cooperate with federal deportation efforts except for undocumented immigrants who are charged with Class A or B felonies.

“If you want to get that 16-year-old dreamer out of Guilford High School, go look somewhere else,” Lamont said.

Lamont also wants to see changes at the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, focused on attracting more students.

For now, that’s a task for Chancellor Terrence Cheng, who was the subject of an audit last month questioning his spending and expenses.

Lamont said he will talk with Board of Regents Chairman Martin Guay before deciding whether to reappoint Cheng.

“I’m going to let him make the call, making sure we’re making the changes at Connecticut State we need to keep it on the right path,” he said.

Lamont is halfway through his second term in office. He said Thursday he’ll make a decision after the session about running for a third term.

“I don’t want to get pushed around politically either,” he said. “So I’m going make up my mind after the session, see how people think we’re doing.”