Democratic legislators ended a tense day of negotiations Tuesday by announcing a deal on a new state budget that the General Assembly will race to adopt Wednesday before the constitutional adjournment deadline of midnight.

Passage will require the cooperation of the Republican minority, an uncertain prospect after House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D-Hamden, and Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, exchanged insults outside the Capitol pressroom.

Sharkey and Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, largely glossed over the spending cuts necessary to balance the budget, focusing instead on positive aspects: No tax increases, more money for transportation funding and revenue-sharing with towns, albeit at lesser amounts than originally planned. It also avoids tapping Connecticut’s emergency reserve.

Each said they have votes for passage in the House and Senate.

The leaders said the package would close a nearly $1 billion gap in the fiscal year that begins July 1, but the line-by-line details would not be available until Wednesday.

The plan imposes deep cuts on salary accounts in most state departments and commissions that probably would require Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to reduce the state workforce beyond the nearly 2,600 jobs his administration is striving to eliminate through layoffs, retirements and attrition. It also funds hospitals and public colleges and universities above the levels recommended by the governor and maintains public financing for state election campaigns.

The deal, confirmed by Malloy’s office, also scraps a controversial corporation tax deferral program and a proposed expansion of the bottle deposit program. It consolidates six longstanding legislative commissions that advocate for ethnic minorities and other demographic groups into two offices.

“This is a budget that represents true structural change,” Sharkey said, adding the package cuts about $830 million in spending from the preliminary $20.4 billion budget adopted last June for 2016-17.

But Looney also said that the plan also relies on some temporary revenues and other one-time budget solutions that would help balance the books next year, but wouldn’t reduce a $2.2 billion plus shortfall in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

“This is a budget that doesn't raise taxes and is built almost entirely on long-term spending reductions, which will help keep expenditures under control in the future,” said Devon Puglia, the governor's spokesman. “Our goal has been to do things differently this year, to ensure that – just like the households we represent – we do not spend money that we don’t have. If and when the legislature passes this budget, we look forward to signing it.”

In successive appearances in the Capitol pressroom, with lobbyists crowding inside the door in hopes of overhearing details, Democratic and Republican legislative leaders began framing the budget debate in the context of the campaign for control of the General Assembly in November.

Sharkey repeated contrasted the Democratic plan with the GOP version, saying it does a better job of protecting core functions of government. He and Fasano exchanged angry words as the Democrats left and the Senate GOP leader arrived.

“Maybe they feel threatened by us. I don’t know. And I understand why they feel threatened,” Fasano said. “They have screwed up this state so badly, I understand they are very nervous about November. I get that.”

The GOP could block passage, forcing the Democrats to return in special session. Fasano declined to say if the minority would allow a vote.

 “I’m not going to prejudge anything. I want to see what we're looking at. Their budget could look like my budget, our budget," Fasano said. "This budget could look like a Republican budget. I’m not going to prejudge it."

The Democratic plan cuts about $50 million from a revenue-sharing program that had called for sending almost $245 million in sales tax receipts to cities and towns.

Democratic legislators, who adopted the revenue-sharing plan last June and are expected to campaign on the program this fall, resisted proposals to cut deeper both from Malloy and from Republican legislators.

Another portion of sales tax receipts was dedicated last summer to Malloy’s initiative to expand transportation investment. Details of the budget in this area were not available, but legislators said a planned funding increase of $130 million was reduced by about $50 million.

The governor, who has pressed hard in recent days for Democratic legislators to embrace permanent spending cuts and to reduce their reliance on temporary budget fixes, had volunteered to support a cut to his big initiative if they would consider additional reductions.

“We are reforming government for the long-term,” Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, said. “We are working to help the middle class in this state. We are helping to grow jobs in this state and look to the long-term.”

“We do have substantial property tax relief for municipalities,” Looney added.

Resources for hospitals, social services and higher education have fallen considerably in recent years, but Sharkey said Democrats — while unable to reverse all damage — were able to fund these programs at levels higher than Malloy recommended.

The strategy behind this budget was to trim spending in most line items rather than impose deep cuts “so as to do the last amount of damage (and) protect the programs that we care about. … The cuts that have been realized are real cuts that provide the structural change we have been looking for in this new economy,” he said.

But this strategy included a number of small cuts that add up in a big way — at least in one segment of the budget.

Though full details weren’t available, Sen. Beth Bye, D-West Hartford, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, confirmed that this budget — similar to proposals from Malloy and from GOP legislators — likely reduces funding for agency and departmental salary accounts by hundreds of millions of dollars.

These cuts likely require more personnel savings than Malloy will be able to achieve through workforce reduction efforts currently underway.

The administration began serving layoff notices last month and the governor said he expects about 1,900 to 2,000 workers will have received pink slips by mid-June.

The administration also expects to eliminate roughly 600 more jobs through retirements and attrition.

Bye said the budget also “sends signals” to state employee unions about another key area legislators hope to curb spending in the future: health care and retirement benefits.

The budget includes changes to reduce costs in these areas among non-union staff. Worker unions, which granted concessions in 2009 and 2011, would have to agree to reopen contracts before benefits could be changed. And union leaders refused to do so this spring, urging Malloy and legislators to consider tax increases on wealthy households and major corporations.

Keith M. Phaneuf and Mark Pazniokas are reporters for The Connecticut Mirror (www.ctmirror.org).

Copyright 2016 © The Connecticut Mirror.

kphaneuf@ctmirror.org

mpazniokas@ctmirror.org