TVW's blog, the Capitol Record, has a Q&A with Republican state Sen. Joseph Zarelli (R-18, Ridgefield) about the constitutional amendment on this year's ballot that would increase the amount of money that's required to go into the state's rainy day fund.

Currently, the legislature has to set aside one percent of state revenues annually for the account, formally known as the stabilization account. This measure, Senate Joint Resolution 8206, would mandate that when the state sees "extraordinary revenue growth"—revenues that are one-third higher than the average growth of over the past five biennia—it puts three-fourths of that revenue increase into the rainy day fund.

Zarelli, the ranking Republican on the senate ways and means committee, tells the Capitol Record:

The biggest problem is that when you have a spike in revenue that you know isn’t going to continue and then you spend that spike, it creates a bow wave — you have no way to support that spending. When revenue comes back down to its historical growth pattern and then spending is way out of balance, that creates problems like we’re in now. The idea is to harmonize the spending pattern so it stays consistent with what is long-term growth instead of the ebbs and flows.

There are some of those in the social services arena who think that we can’t commit to saving money, we have to spend it because there’s a huge need.There is a small group, but my message to them is that it does us no good if we commit to spending that we then have to withdraw from.