$2.65B SURPLUS. $80B STILL OWED.

CT Mirror is celebrating a $2.65 billion surplus and an extra billion in revenue over the next two years. The numbers are real. The framing is not.

The consensus revenue forecast from OPM and the nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis does show a robust finish to the current year and added capacity in the next biennium. A lot of that is capital gains and pass-through entity taxes — volatile income tied to the stock market and concentrated in Fairfield County.

What the piece leads with as “progress” is the surplus. What it treats as secondary is the roughly $80 billion in long-term obligations Connecticut still carries: bonded debt plus unfunded pensions and retiree health care. Those figures come from the same state reporting CT Mirror and CT Insider have used. About $11 billion in unfunded liabilities has been paid down with surplus dollars since 2020. That is real. The remaining structural debt is also real.

Families do not feel “progress” in their electric bills, property taxes, or the cost of living. A surplus that exists on paper while the state still ranks among the highest for long-term obligations per capita is not the affordability story Lamont’s allies are selling.

The red box says it cleanly: $2.65B SURPLUS. $80B STILL OWED.