Governor Ned Lamont today announced that the FY 2026/2027 biennial state budget proposal that he presented to the Connecticut General Assembly last month continues recent trends under his administration of increasing state funding for Connecticut’s town and city governments to support the administration and delivery of municipal services, even while the state has made challenging funding decisions and streamlined costs across state government.
Municipal aid is the largest category of state spending within the entire general fund. Since taking office since 2019, every state budget Governor Lamont has enacted has not only held municipal funding harmless, but it has also increased that funding each year.
Over the last five years:
- The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant to municipalities, which supports the operations of K-12 public schools, has increased 17%. The state’s per pupil spending of $22,000 is among the highest in the country (top five) and nearly $5,000 above the national per pupil average of $16,665.
- PILOT funding to municipalities has doubled.
- General government aid to municipalities has doubled.
- More than $400 million in state grants have been provided to the state’s most distressed municipalities through the Community Investment Fund, which Governor Lamont and the General Assembly established in 2022 to support capital improvement projects in towns and cities.
- More than $3.3 billion has been provided to municipalities to fund school construction projects.
The FY 2026/2027 budget that Governor Lamont proposed and is currently being considered by the state legislature contains several areas of increases for municipal services, including:
- An $85 million increase in the ECS grant to municipalities in FY 2026. This increase will bring ECS aid to municipalities a full two-years ahead of the schedule planned in the state’s current ten-year phase-in timeline.
- A $40 million increase in the Excess Cost Grant in FY 2027 to support special education services.
- The creation of a new state grant to municipalities called the High-Quality Special Education Incentive Grant, which will support the ability of school districts to provide high-quality special education programming in-district and regionally, reducing reliance on out-of-district placements and meeting students’ needs as identified by their individualized education program in the least restrictive environment. The budget proposal invests $10 million from the general fund and $4 million in bond funds in this grant program for FY 2027.
- The largest expansion of preschool access in Connecticut history through the creation of the Universal Preschool Endowment, which will be seeded by $300 million from the FY 2025 surplus and in the following years will receive funding from any unappropriated surpluses in the general fund.
- An investment of $9.9 million in FY 2027 to continue the Learner Education and Engagement Program (LEAP), which Governor Lamont established during the COVID-19 pandemic to help address chronic student absenteeism and engagement.
- An investment of $700,000 in FY 2026 to eliminate reduced price lunch and breakfast fees for students statewide.
- An additional investment of $12.4 million in FY 2027 to provide universal free school breakfast.
- An investment of $5 million in FY 2027 to support a High Dosage Tutoring Grant program, which will serve nearly 12,000 students to provide tutoring support.
- An investment of $350 million in FY 2026 and 2027 combined to continue grants through the Community Investment Fund.
The General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee and Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee are currently reviewing the governor’s budget proposal and are anticipated to act on it in the coming weeks.