Several religious leaders with membership in the Greater Hartford Interfaith Action Alliance held a press conference on Monday, calling on Gov. Ned Lamont and Connecticut lawmakers to pass what they described as a “moral budget.”
The alliance members, who have advocated for initiatives involving housing, gun safety, education and youth justice, gathered at the Capitol to voice their displeasure with the state’s so-called fiscal “guardrails,” which have limited how much tax revenue the state can spend on social services and other public needs in the state.
The press conference was effectively a challenge to Lamont, who has stood behind the budgetary controls that have generated significant budget surpluses, filled Connecticut’s rainy day fund and allowed the state to pay down billions of dollars in pension debt.
At the press conference, the Rev. Josh Pawelek, a Unitarian Minister and member of the interfaith alliance, said “inequities” in the current budgeting system were “impoverishing the people of Connecticut.”
Other members of the alliance called on Connecticut legislators to find ways to put more of the tax revenues toward fixing the state’s health care systems, supplementing public schools and universities and addressing the ongoing housing crisis.
Rabbi Deborah Cantor, the leader of Congregation B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom in Bloomfield, said it was “immoral to choose human surplus over investing in moral dignity.” Cantor said that the people of her community, many of whom work multiple jobs and struggle to make ends meet, deserve better.
Pawelek said lawmakers’ hyperfocus on paying down the state’s massive pension debt in recent years has inhibited their ability to assist the state’s lowest-income residents.
The faith leaders were not alone in criticizing the fiscal guardrails ahead of Lamont’s upcoming budget address this week. Members of the Service Employees International Union Local 1199, which represents nurses, hospital staff, home care aides and other medical professionals, also called for changing those fiscal controls.
Union members held up signs in the Capitol demanding the legislature “remove the roadblocks” around Connecticut’s state budget.
The Rev. Dr. Albert Bailey Jr. of the Shiloh Baptist Church in the North End of Hartford spoke with the union members in mind and said, “the state is trying to inflict a crisis on the welfare of the people.”
He added that it was up to Connecticut to remind state officials of their stake in government, claiming that “they need us more than we need them.”
Pawelek said that until the “fiscal roadblocks” are resolved, he and the other members of the interfaith alliance will continue to escalate their complaints. He said the group intends to have a presence in the legislature throughout the entirety of the legislative session.
