Connecticut, the wealthiest U.S. state, is cash poor.

The home to hedge funds, insurers and United Technologies Corp. said this month it faces a $259 million general-fund deficit in the year ending June 30, almost double what it forecast in late April, after August’s stock market crash caused income-tax collections to trail forecasts. With little room to maneuver, state officials, credit rating companies and bond investors predict Connecticut will have to dip into its $406 million rainy-day fund for the second year in a row.

It may not be the last time. Though Governor Dannel Malloy and lawmakers came to an agreement on how to close a nearly $1 billion hole in the 2017 budget, and may pass the revised spending plan as soon as this week, the state has persistently missed revenue forecasts, triggering layoffs and spending cuts. Moody’s Investors Service dropped the outlook on the state to negative in March after years of slow wage growth and the loss of residents to other states -- trends Malloy calls “Connecticut’s new economic reality.”

“The difficulties there are likely to get worse over the next two years,” said Tom McLoughlin, head of municipal research in New York at UBS Wealth Management Americas, which oversees about $85 billion of the debt. He expects Connecticut’s bond prices to weaken, relative to other states. “When we have the next recession, whenever that is, the problems that they’re looking at today are only going to get worse.”

Connecticut is the wealthiest U.S. state as measured by per-capita income, home to finance professionals who commute to New York. That makes its tax collections sensitive to market swings as revenue from capital gains falls. It’s also the most-indebted, with $6,155 of obligations per resident, according to Moody’s. And its pension fund has only 50.4 percent of assets needed to pay future liabilities, the third worst among U.S. states, though it’s making its annual contributions in full to catch up.

A Bloomberg index of 10-year Connecticut general-obligation bonds shows investors are demanding an extra 0.6 percentage point of yield to own the state’s debt rather than top-rated munis. That’s not far from a record-high 0.65 percentage point in March, when Connecticut issued debt for a yield 2.52 percent.

With little latitude to reduce debt-service and pension-contribution costs, the state has turned to layoffs as a way to offset the revenue shortfalls. More than 700 employees have lost their jobs this year from departments like human services, corrections and even the judicial branch, according to Ben Barnes, secretary of the Office of Policy and Management. More are on the way, he said.

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