Lamont negotiates healthy raises for CT state troopers
Yehyun Kim / CT Mirror
A salute as the national anthem is played during the Connecticut State Police graduation ceremony in 2020.
Legislators are looking to delay raises for most state workers as Connecticut braces for big cuts in federal aid. But early indications are those pay hikes — whenever they arrive — will be healthy, costing the state more than $120 million per year.
Gov. Ned Lamont and the union representing nearly 900 state police troopers recently struck a tentative deal that grants a 2.5% cost-of-living increase next July 1. All but senior troopers also are eligible for a step increase that adds about 2 more percentage points to the raise.
Those proposed raises for troopers, which legislators will be asked to ratify later this spring, offer indications of the pay hikes to come for the state’s more than 40,000 other unionized employees.
In other words, how would Connecticut convince arbiters it can’t afford 4.5% raises for engineers, social workers, IT professionals, custodians and others — once it had granted such increases to troopers?
The prospect of new raises topping 4% for all workers is already polarizing legislative leaders this week.
Majority Democrats say the state workforce is badly understaffed and that many agencies struggle to recruit or retain employees. But Republicans ask why the administration, which anticipates Congress will slash hundreds of millions or even billions in aid to Connecticut and its municipalities, is poised to dole out raises that exceed those offered most private-sector workers.
GOP leaders: Democrats exaggerate CT budget crisis
“Clearly they [Democrats] are just playing a shell game,” said House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, R-North Branford. “They continue to beat the drum there are phantom cuts coming” from Washington.
In recent days, Democratic-controlled committees have proposed legally exceeding the state spending cap next fiscal year; redirecting $700 million from a savings program to reduce pension debt to instead off-set impending cuts from Washington; and boosting taxes on businesses and high-earning households.
“I think we have to be extremely careful with the [wage] contracts that are presented before us,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield. “Keep in mind the taxpayer.”
“For weeks, lawmakers have claimed that massive federal cuts are looming, using fear as a tool to justify breaking Connecticut’s bipartisan fiscal guardrails,” said Carol Platt Liebau, president of the Yankee Institute, a conservative fiscal policy group. “Yet they’ve made no effort to reduce state spending and instead proposed a budget that blows past our spending cap.”
Both Harding and Candelora praised the important work done by state troopers but said legislators should be looking to freeze wages for all state employees before adopting the measures proposed in committee.
The Lamont administration estimates the troopers’ raises would cost $6.3 million next fiscal year, a tiny share of an overall state budget expected to approach or exceed $27 billion. But if all workers get similar raises, the overall cost approaches $130 million, based on past estimates from state analysts.
Asking workers to forgo raises one year wouldn’t be too painful, Candelora added, given the healthy increases they’ve received in recent years.
The legislature ratified a four-year contract with the troopers union in 2023 that set compensation for the first three years and stipulated a reopener to set wages for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
The Lamont administration estimated when that original contract was presented that the average salary for troopers would increase by 9.7% in the first year, 3% in the second and 4.8% in the third.
Most state employee unions have received 2.5% general wage hikes and a step increase for each of the past four fiscal years.
Democratic leaders: CT is struggling to maintain its workforce
Democrats say the issue is more complex than that.
The Executive Branch workforce shrank 10% between 2011 and 2018 as then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the legislature often used attrition and hiring freezes to close budget deficits.
The Lamont administration has struggled to attract and retain workers because Malloy significantly scaled back pension and other retirement benefits for new hires through concessions agreements with unions in 2011 and 2017.
More than 4,400 veteran state employees retired between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2022 — roughly double the total normally seen in a full year — just before certain restrictions on pension benefits tied to the 2017 concessions package took effect.
The state police contract ratified in 2023 was specifically designed to boost compensation to stem a trooper recruitment crisis.
“The Republicans pay lip service to supporting law enforcement, except where it really counts,” said Senate President Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven.
House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, predicted some rank-and-file Republican legislators would support the new raises proposed for troopers.
“It will not be their entire caucus voting ‘no,’” the speaker said. “No chance.”
Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, said “municipalities regularly give raises above and beyond what state employees get,” further complicating efforts to retain workers.
Osten also noted that state government spending on overtime has increasingly been criticized but reflects inadequate staffing in “24-7” agencies such as the state police force and the Department of Correction. Osten is a retired correction officer supervisor and former president of the correction supervisors union.
According to the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis, agencies and departments spent more than $158 million on overtime through the first six months of this fiscal year — about $6.7 million, or 4.4%, more than they had through the first half of the prior year.
The State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, which represents all major state employee bargaining units excluding the troopers’ union, wrote in a statement that the state police suffer from “severe understaffing.”
The force stood at roughly 1,100 one decade ago when the troopers union battled Malloy in court because a statute directing a minimum level of 1,248 troopers was not being followed.
The SEBAC statement added that “recognizing the need to provide fair wages and working conditions is an important step forward towards protecting the vital public services upon which our communities depend.”
Lamont’s budget spokesman, Chris Collibee, said the administration “appreciates the difficult and essential work done by the men and women of the Connecticut State Police. This wage reopener continues the current wage increase pattern for their bargaining unit.”
The president of the Connecticut State Police Union, Todd Fedigan, could not be reached Thursday for comment.
According to the details of the wage agreement the Lamont administration filed Wednesday with the General Assembly, the state police union ratified the deal on April 14.
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