Public Hearing Testimony of Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo
Department of Labor
Human Services Committee
March 17, 2026
Good Morning Senator Lesser, Representative Gilchrest, Senator Perillo, Representative Case and members of the Human Services Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with written testimony regarding HB 5540: AN ACT CONCERNING THE MITIGATION OF BENEFITS CLIFFS. My name is Danté Bartolomeo and I am the Commissioner of the CT Department of Labor (CTDOL).
CTDOL administers Connecticut’s Jobs First Employment Services (JFES), a program that helps parents who are recipients of Temporary Family Assistance (TFA) gain the skills needed to obtain meaningful employment and become independent of assistance. The JFES program emphasizes a work-first approach focused on rapid employment, moving participants into jobs quickly via job search and short-term training rather than long-term education. Job search, unsubsidized and subsidized employment activities are combined with education and training.
CTDOL recognizes and appreciates the concerns that the proponents of HB 5540 are attempting to address and supports the intent of this legislation. When members of a household manage to increase their income, only to lose their temporary family assistance abruptly, it creates a benefit cliff that can be devastating the entire family. However, the state mandated policy changes in HB5540 would impact JFES, a federally funded program, administered by CTDOL, and would have considerable associated costs. In addition, the changes could pose implementation challenges for our agency and, most importantly, could negatively impact the JFES clients that we serve.
Specifically, Section One refers any family receiving a transitional benefit to meet with a JFES case manager to determine whether there are workforce services that could benefit the family. This provision would likely result in CTDOL’s JFES case managers managing more JFES clients and for a longer period thereby increasing caseloads to an untenable level for quality case management. Section Three establishes a public-private partnership, two-year pilot program to mitigate benefits cliffs for two hundred households that are receiving public assistance with the Department of Social Services, Office of Early Childhood, CTDOL, Department of Housing and the Office of Workforce Strategy. Although CTDOL is not opposed to this concept, further clarity is needed regarding the implementation of this pilot and how it might impact the current workload of CTDOL’s JFES program, and JFES case managers. Thank you for the opportunity to provide you with this written testimony regarding HB 5540.
My staff and I are reachable to further discuss HB 5540 by directing any questions you may have to Marisa Morello, Legislative and Communications Project Manager at marisa.morello@ct.gov.
