Remember when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was Gov. Dan Malloy’s Public Enemy No. 1? Early in Malloy’s tenure, they sparred on TV and jockeyed for national attention. Well, now, with Connecticut’s formerly robust budget surplus of half a billion bucks vanishing down to $44 million, Malloy’s people are citing New Jersey, yes New Jersey, which is having similar budget problems. Conversely, minority Republicans are citing the fiscal austerity of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Ben Barnes,the governor’s budget chief, mentioned New Jersey, again, the other day while spinning reporters on the genesis of the incredible shrinking budget surplus. 
“Many other states…there have been few press reports and we have informal contacts with unpublished information from other states and New Jersey, however, has been publicized recently and I expect you’ll see many other states that have similar tax structures to us and high net-worth individuals residing in those states are showing double-digit drops in April capital-gains-related tax collections. This is a national phenomenon that we believe is especially acute in Connecticut because of the prosperity of some of our residents and their high net worth. But we don’t believe that we’re by any means alone. I think that you will see significant realignments of budgets and revenue expectations across states that have high net worth individuals. Those principally are in the northeast and on the west coast…I know New Jersey is the one news report that I have seen made public about that. I think it was a $600 million drop in revenue there. We’re not alone. The other thing I would add is that it really is just a temporary setback. Some of it may carry forward but certainly not all of it…The top 50 tax payers account for less than 10 percent of our capital gains tax income…There is a large number of people who report capital-gains income. They’re not all the high rollers whose names you can pick out of the business pages.”
Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, who is seeking the GOP nomination to challenge Malloy, was fired up and ready for battle. “We know his playbook,” McKinney told reporters. “He’s going to try to blame it on the national recession. He’s having his press people blame it on New Jersey, blame it on George Bush. But there’s a guy named Gov. Cuomo right next door who’s a pretty liberal, progressive Democrat, who didn’t raise taxes like Gov. Malloy did, who’s offering tax cuts for business incentives and their budget is doing a lot better than ours is doing here in Connecticut.”
