Lamont on Free Transit, Veterans Fares & Education Funding

Gov. Ned Lamont wants free bus rides for veterans, and he’s not ruling out free fares for everyone. Speaking Thursday evening at the Connecticut Mirror’s “In the Room” event in Hartford, Lamont laid out his transit priorities for the session and floated a broader vision for public transit that would have been hard to imagine from him two years ago.

“Anything I can do for the veterans, it’s an enormous priority for me,” Lamont told CT Mirror Events Host John Dankosky. “This is a priority for me and I’d like to get it over the finish line.”

The proposal on the table: $3.5 million for free and reduced bus fares covering veterans and K-12 students. If it passes as expected, Connecticut would become the first state in the country to offer free bus passes to veterans for use anywhere in the state. The legislation currently sits in the Appropriations Committee’s midterm budget proposal, awaiting negotiation with Lamont’s office.

Why veterans, why now

Veterans groups and advocates have spent months pressing both the governor and the General Assembly on this. Their argument isn’t just about saving money on bus fare. Many struggling veterans rely on transit to get to job interviews, food pantries, and medical appointments. Cheaper rides also mean more chances to get out, connect with people, attend recreational events, and do the kinds of things that quietly improve mental health. Advocates say that access to those ordinary moments matters.

Not a small thing.

Lamont’s support tracks with what veteran advocates have been pushing. He’s framing it as an affordability issue, a health issue, and frankly, a moral one.

The COVID memory

Here’s where it gets interesting. Lamont brought up the pandemic-era period when Connecticut made bus fares free for all riders. “More people took the bus, less cars, and it just made life a lot more affordable,” he said.

That program ended in 2023. Lamont cited pushback from the federal government and the high cost as reasons it didn’t continue. But Thursday night, he sounded like someone who hasn’t forgotten it worked.

When Dankosky pressed him on whether he wants free buses for everyone, Lamont laughed and name-dropped New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who built his mayoral campaign around a free bus promise. “Mamdani likes the idea,” Lamont said.

Then he made the utilitarian case plainly: “You guys look around, two-thirds of these buses are two-thirds empty, two-thirds of the time. Why aren’t I taking care of people?”

That’s not a firm policy commitment. But it’s not nothing, either. For Gold Coast commuters who drive because CT Transit feels unreliable and under-resourced, the idea of a governor who genuinely wants to fill those buses is worth watching. Connecticut’s public transit system has long struggled to attract riders outside of core commuter corridors.

The education funding piece

Lamont also addressed education funding Thursday, a subject that’s generated real friction this session. The state, he said, has managed to set aside $500 million through its fiscal guardrails for what he called “affordability.” His original pitch was to direct that pool toward a $200-per-person tax rebate timed to land just before Election Day.

He’s now signaling that education may claim a big chunk of it. “My instinct is, a lot of that is going to go to education,” Lamont said, describing the money flowing either to municipalities or directly to schools.

For towns like West Hartford, Westport, and Fairfield that have been watching state education funding formulas with close attention, that’s a meaningful signal. The exact split between a tax rebate and school funding will matter enormously to local budgets, and Lamont’s remarks suggest the negotiation is still live.

Reporting from CT Mirror first surfaced these comments from the Thursday event.

What to watch

The Appropriations Committee’s midterm budget proposal still has to get through negotiation with the governor’s office. The veteran and student fare provisions seem likely to survive that process. The bigger question is what happens to the $500 million affordability pool, and whether Lamont’s free-transit enthusiasm survives contact with a federal funding environment that has grown more complicated, not less, since the pandemic program ended.

Connecticut won’t go fully fare-free this session. But the conversation has shifted in ways that would have seemed unlikely even a year ago.