I wrote an initial post about internal budget information I found on the UConn fiscal crisis, which I sent around and even made a tiktok about. I'm including that stuff below, which is relevant for sure. I got some good feedback on bluesky from the chair of the history department at UConn though, who was actually quoted in the reporting above. So I'm writing second part with what I learned from the CT Mirror's in-depth reporting on the state's fiscal situation post-pandemic.
The big talking points about these cuts have been about declining state aid, which is happening because of federal covid funds drying up. The more initiated point to pension contribution debt as a cause as well, sapping state monies. But from what I can tell, the declining state aid has to do with a spending cap policy the governor's administration can control. They're just choosing not to.
Connecticut was famous in the postwar era for not having an income tax. That's more or less why the southwestern part of the state has all these big houses: rich people moved there from New York State to get out of paying income taxes. That was all well and good, but by the 80s--deindustrialization, etc--this was untenable.
CT passed an income tax to get budgets in order, along with rules around how much state agencies can spend as a proportion to household income and inflation. That's a spending cap: programs like higher education can only get a certain amount of money relative to how much money people make and how much inflation goes up or down.
The Mirror articles detail the history of this policy over the years. What's important is that many administrations found ways of working with this cap to make sure important programs got money. While some in the state are blaming pension contributions as a big pressure on state spending right now, as we know, pension politics are all about market projections, and the last few years of economic data have been all over the map (plus former governors declared pension contributions cap exempt!). So I don't think it's quite fair to blame public pensions, particularly when you consider recent cap policy decisions.
In 2017, fiscal conservatives made the cap policy more stringent. They called it a "guardrail" against spending. That tight, stingy cap policy is actually still in place, even as federal funding dries up in 2025, which Lamont was fine to spend lavishly, and inflation goes down, making the cap policy even tighter. Plus, the state has a $3.3 billion rainy day fund and money coming in from other revenue sources. It's fine!
Conditions have changed since 2017, or maybe even early last year when people thought inflation was more entrenched. It was actually transitory, like all the leftists said it was, and, so, what, should UConn professors lose students and programs because the Lamont administration won't get with the times?
This feels like the kind of thing that professors could organize around and try work stoppages or other big actions. Pressure the Lamont administration to make pension contributions exempt from cap policy, ease the stringent cap policy, and increase that state aid. It's in their power to do it.