Gov. Dannel Malloy said on Friday that he number of state employee layoffs might be higher than initially expected according to his staff’s reading of the most recent budget the Appropriations Committee approved.
“I think it’s well in excess of 1,000. It could easily be approaching 2,000. Based on the most recent budget document it go to as much as 4,000, quite frankly. That’s our read of it,” Malloy said.
The budget the governor presented before his State of the State Address two months ago included savings from more than 3,000 layoffs. The budget trimmed spending by more than a half a billion dollars in order to avoid a deficit.
Now the deficit is estimated at more than $900 million and he said further cuts are needed, and that if the budget goes into effect as passed by the committee this week, then roughly 9 percent of the state’s 45,000 person workforce could be in jeopardy of losing their jobs.
“Our analysis of that document would indicate that the cuts that they’ve made to salary accounts are substantially greater than the ones we have recommended,” Malloy said.
The budget the budget writing committee provided this week only cut $575 million from current spending, as one of the chairs said it would be “irresponsible” to cut more than that without having more firm revenue projections for the month of April when tax receipts will be reported.
The first round of cuts was made public on Friday morning.
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Commissioner Scott Semple told employees in a letter that his spending reduction plan had been approved and that the 147 layoffs were a key part.
Malloy will release a new budget next week that he said will be balanced for the 2017 fiscal year.