Report Recommends Help For Connecticut’s Low-Income Families

By Cara Rubinsky

Associated Press

HARTFORD — An antipoverty group will push state officials to help the working poor by enacting Connecticut’s own version of the federal earned-income tax credit and restoring child care subsidies.

The recommendations are included in a new report on poverty that says more than 66,000 Connecticut families can’t make ends meet even though at least one adult works full-time. Those families had incomes below $37,620, or twice the federal poverty level.

The report, released Wednesday by the Connecticut Association for Human Services, also says two-thirds of low-income working families spend more than a third of their income on housing and more than a quarter have at least one parent with no health insurance.

The findings will be the focus of a forum scheduled for Wednesday morning at the state Capitol.

“Low-wage workers are part of the overall equation when talking about what to do to improve the state’s overall economy,” said Jim Horan, executive director of the Connecticut Association for Human Services. “They’ve often been ignored.”

Connecticut is one of the richest states in the nation, but its capital city, Hartford, is one of the poorest, according to 2000 Census data. The state has a relatively low proportion of low-income working poor, but the gap between the top 20 percent of wage earners and the bottom 20 percent is the third-largest in the nation.

Horan said his group’s focus in the next legislative session, which starts February 8, will be pushing for a state tax credit for the working poor and more funding for child care. He also said his group would like to see more funding for adult education programs.

A state version of the federal earned-income tax credit has been proposed before. Horan said the climate may be better this year because the state has a projected surplus of $525 million and a credit would not be counted toward the constitutional cap that governs how much the state can spend each year.

Republicans have opposed the credit in the past, saying reducing the state income tax would be more helpful.

House Majority Leader Christopher Donovan, D-Meriden, said he believes there is support in the General Assembly for such a credit.

“The population that is most struggling to maintain a decent standard of living are the ones we need to pay attention to during tough times,” he said.

Horan said the only other Northeast states that do not have their own version of the credit are New Hampshire, which has no state income tax, and Pennsylvania.

A state earned-income tax credit would refund sales tax and property tax money to the state’s poorest people, many of whom already do not pay income taxes.

Horan said his group estimates the state credit, which would be one-fifth of the federal credit, would cost about $50 million a year.

An estimated 168,000 households, or about 10 percent, would be eligible.

The report also recommends restoring funding that had been cut to the Care 4 Kids program, which subsidizes child care for low-income families. In 2004, enrollment in the program dropped from 40,000 to 15,000 after budget cuts, and 17,000 children were on a waiting list.

“We’d like to see that funding restored so more parents can go to work, because work is the thing that’s going to change their lives,” Horan said.