Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy on Tuesday continued his push for a 30-year, $100 billion transportation infrastructure spending package.
Malloy, a Democrat re-elected to a second four-year term in November, attended the inaugural meeting in Hartford of a panel he created to recommend options for overhauling transportation financing.
Later Tuesday, he was scheduled to meet with Metro-North Railroad President Joseph Giulietti, and state and local officials regarding the replacement of the Walk Bridge in Norwalk, which serves Metro-North's New Haven commuter rail line.
Metro-North is a unit of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On Monday, Metro-North and Connecticut's Department of Transportation announced that New Haven line ridership reached record highs in 2014, with 39.6 million passenger trips - a 1.6% increase over 2013.
"That tells us as we build it out, as we improve it, we can be assured that we're going to see the public can react positively to those kinds of investments," Malloy told reporters in Hartford.
Last Friday, Malloy, a former Stamford mayor and former prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y., took his pitch regional.
"We have to get past the thinking that bridges in Stamford will last forever or that a 119-year-old railroad bridge in Norwalk will carry trains forever," he said in New York at Friday's annual assembly of the Regional Plan Association, an urban policy organization. "We have to have a discussion about how to pay for it."
The initial step in the funding proposal is a five-year, $10 billion program -- mostly for transit infrastructure - that includes $2.8 billion in capital funding.
State lawmakers are weighing a two-year, $40 billion budget Malloy submitted to the General Assembly in February. Democrats wield majorities of in 87-64 and 21-15 in the House and Senate, respectively.
Connecticut's Republicans, meanwhile, are promoting budget alternative that calls for $67 billion of spending over 30 years.
"We are proposing a plan that lays the groundwork for a better Connecticut today and for our future," said state Sen. Len Fasano, R-North Haven. "This is more than a two year budget. It's a blueprint to empowering people in our state to be successful."
Connecticut's projected general fund deficit for fiscal 2015 is $121.2 million, state budget director Benjamin Barnes said last week.
Moody's Investors Service rates Connecticut's $15 billion of general obligation debt Aa3. Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor's and Kroll Bond Rating Agency rate the bonds AA.
