CT Senate GOP Call for Action to Address “Unaffordable CT”
December 16, 2024
‘Simply unaffordable’: The high cost of living in Connecticut
Hartford Courant front page
Faced with the high cost of living, many Connecticut residents are struggling to get by against a torrent of inflated prices.
A steady stream of surveys, reports, and studies shows that many residents are literally living paycheck to paycheck or running up credit card debt to pay the bills. The latest survey by The Urban Institute think tank says that 52% of all people in the United States lack economic security.
The costs are even higher in states in the Northeast, including Connecticut, where the cost of economic security in 2022 was estimated at $151,000 for a family of four.
Now, as the state legislature prepares to start the new legislative session on Jan. 8, politicians are asking exactly what can be done to help those who are struggling financially.
The Senate Republican caucus says that action is needed to help middle-class families.
“From groceries and electric bills to insurance and housing, Connecticut has become simply unaffordable,” the senators said.
“Democrats have already refused to take swift action on lowering energy costs. They have refused to eliminate onerous taxes like the truck tax which directly increases grocery costs. Democrats rejected the Senate Republican plan to retroactively reduce the state income tax for the middle-class. Democrats said no to our plan for a $2,000 per child tax deduction and no to nearly doubling access to the $300 property tax credit. Every issue the state legislature debates in the 2025 legislative session must focus on one word: Affordability.”
Some of the high costs in Connecticut are driven particularly by the steep prices for housing, electricity and groceries.
The cost of owning a home in Connecticut is among the highest in the nation, with property taxes a major component, placing Connecticut behind just four other states.
Connecticut came in fifth highest in a study by Bankrate.com that found owners of a typical single-family house in Connecticut faced homeownership costs – not including mortgage principal and interest payments – of $23,515 annually compared with $18,996 in 2020, just prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
The increase represents a 24% jump, or $4,519 a year, and is 30% higher than nationally, according to the Bankrate’s “Hidden Cost of Homeownership Study.”
Connecticut’s overall costs – including property taxes, maintenance, cable and internet fees, annual energy bills, and homeowners insurance – ranked only behind New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, and Hawaii.
In Connecticut, on average, homeowners are paying $8,073 in property taxes in 2024, a 9% increase compared with $7,395 in 2020, the study shows.
In recent years, skyrocketing home sale prices, coupled with mortgage rates that have been double what they were several years ago, have been at the root of the squeeze. This has widened the gap between those who can purchase a home and those who cannot.
Rising homeowners insurance rates, increasing property taxes in many towns and cities and the cost of home upkeep also are putting the pressure on homeownership, experts say.
Electricity
For decades, Connecticut residents have been complaining loudly about the high costs of electricity.
Sen. Ryan Fazio, a Greenwich Republican who serves as the ranking senator on energy issues, says that the state’s electricity rates rank third highest in the United States behind only “Hawaii, which is an island, and California, which has lost its mind.”
One of the major complaints recently has centered around the “public benefit charges” that are being paid over a 10-month period to cover a deal crafted by the legislature for purchasing power from the Millstone nuclear plant and also paying unpaid bills for customers who avoided shutoffs for four years due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans have called for permanently removing the public charges from the electric bills and instead having them paid through the $26 billion annual state budget. They have also called for using unallocated federal coronavirus money to help cover “the costs associated with electric vehicle charging programs and provide additional rate relief to ratepayers to the maximum extent possible as funds allow.”
But Democrats who control the state House of Representatives and Senate rejected a special session, saying that legislators could work on the difficult issues during the next regular session that starts on Jan. 8.
With grocery prices skyrocketing, state Attorney General William Tong launched an investigation in April into whether major grocery retailers have engaged in price gouging.
Tong’s spokeswoman, Elizabeth Benton, said the office has sought information from major grocers and “are engaged in active conversations regarding pricing factors” that drive up costs.
Even top state officials, including Tong himself, are impacted by inflation.
“Two things really bother me, and that’s the price of nuts and the price of eggs,” Tong said earlier this year. “I eat a lot of nuts. If you like almonds, like I do, they’re super expensive. And the price of almonds are ever going up. I’m also a big fan of soft-boiled and hard-boiled eggs.”
Tong added, “The cost, not even organic eggs, but basic eggs in the supermarket sometimes are several dollars higher than they used to be. And that really hits all of us, all families here in Connecticut. Nuts, eggs, things that all of us depend on every single day to live.”