CSU-AAUP members talk to state politicians and testify at the legislature in Hartford to demand what is best for our students, universities and communities.
2026 Legislative Session recap
The 2026 CT legislative session was a short session. It was the second year of a biennial budget so only some adjustments were made to funding.
Some of the successes of CSU-AAUP lobbying include:
- Fair contract: We won a fair union contract with raises and additional protections for faculty by ensuring that it was passed by legislators.
- PACT funding: We restored funding for the PACT expansion we won in the last session. PACT is the scholarship program that covers leftover tuition and fees for students attending the community colleges, so they can avoid accruing debt. We won an expansion of PACT that allows community college graduates to take the scholarship with them to the CSUs. However, Gov. Lamont's initial budget cut funding for this newly expanded program in half. Through our lobbying work, we won back that full funding.
- Scholarship displacement: We advocated for legislators to ban scholarship displacement at public colleges and universities. Scholarship displacement is a practice where an institution will award a student financial aid but then later reduce the financial aid package if the student received an external scholarship award (such as a local award from a Rotary Club). This will greatly help our students who need sufficient financial aid to achieve their higher education goals.
- Prevented professional bachelor's degrees: We won against a campaign to create 90-credit "professional bachelor's" degrees at our institutions. A 90-credit BA would have significantly diminish the value of a BA.
We also worked with our coalition partners on several issues. Connecticut for All (CTFA), a coalition of labor unions, community organizations and faith groups, continued to push for tax reform and other legislation that would promote equity in our state.
- Revenue: CTFA won $800 million in revenue outside the state's spending cap to go toward public services.
- Immigrant protections: We won protection for sensitive locations from federal immigration agents.
- Democratic protections: We won regulations for automated license plate readers that include consequences for agents who violate citizens' rights (see SB397).
- Health justice: We maintained the HUSKY for Immigrants Program, but did not win funding to offset potential federal cuts.
2027 Session upcoming
The 2027 legislative session begins in January 2027. It is a long session in which a new biennial budget will be passed. CSU-AAUP will be working on a number of issues. Currently we plan to advocate for changes to help higher education:
- Increased funding for the CSCU system
- A better funding model for public higher education that is predictable and reliable
- Expanded PACT funding so more student can attend the CSUs debt free
- Rethinking of the structure of the BOR
- An Academic Freedom bill for all CT higher education institutions
We also will participate in efforts to help all of CT by rethinking our fiscal guardrails, otherwise known as roadblocks, that prevent our elected legislators from spending our huge surpluses on key services like public education. For more on them see here.
Other issues may come up and we will support the efforts of our affiliates allies like AFT and CTFA.
We will need the help of CSU-AAUP members to:
- Meet with their representatives in the state legislature and explain our issues
- Write to state politicians
- Testify at public hearings
- Show up in red t-shirts at the state capitol
- Lobby in general
If you are interested in helping us with our legislative work, contact our CSU-AAUP Organizer.
More information about how to lobby and testify is here:
Find your legislators
- If you are interested in finding your legislators, go to the Connecticut General Assembly website and fill in your address. Once you click the submit button, the form will go blank and you must scroll down to see the results.
- To read about upcoming hearings, go to the CGA website and look at the lefthand side as you scroll to find the Bulletin. Hearing dates, times and links are updated in the Bulletin regularly.
- To find a particular bill, click here to use the advanced or basic bill search.
Guides to testifying:
Advice on how to lobby
