OFA: Connecticut fiscal guardrails will make $1.6 billion unavailable to FY26 budget; BRF at statutory cap

The Office of Fiscal Analysis told the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee that Connecticut’s fiscal guardrails will remove roughly $1.6 billion from amounts available to be appropriated for fiscal 2026, with most of that sum coming from the volatility cap.

The presentation said the combined impact of the revenue cap and the volatility cap for FY26 is $1,600,000,000; the volatility cap portion is about $1,300,000,000 and the revenue cap about $300,000,000. Neil Ayers of the Office of Fiscal Analysis summarized the history and the current mechanics of the guardrails, saying, “the fiscal guardrails were adopted after the long and painful summer and fall of, 2017.”

Why it matters: those caps remove money from the pool of revenue that lawmakers may appropriate in the upcoming biennium. According to OFA’s slides and presentation, deposits above the BRF cap instead have been used to reduce unfunded…