CFA News

For a generation or more, the lowly penny has been ignored: largely a nuisance at the check-out counter, sidelined by credit or debit and unceremoniously tossed in jars for storage, rarely retrieved for a future purchase.

But now, merchants can’t seem to get enough of them.

A nationwide penny shortage, which has deepened since the U.S. Mint stopped production of the one-cent piece late last year, has stores, restaurants and businesses of all sizes in Connecticut scrambling to adjust in a system where prices still generally factor in the one-cent coin.

And when there are no pennies in the till, rounding to the nearest nickel has become the fallback.

At the Dollar Tree in Plainville, where assistant store manager Jamilette Velazquez estimates more than 50% of customers pay in cash, the scarcity of pennies became acute in December, forcing the store cashiers to round to the nearest nickel.

“We don’t have any (pennies) right now,” Velazquez said recently. “We only get what the customers give us, and then we have to give them right out again.”

Cashiers do the mental rounding math. Signs posted at the discount variety store call attention to the penny shortage and urge customers to pay with exact change.

The shortage has become far-reaching, extending well beyond retailers, even to local governments.

In Bristol, the city came close to running out of pennies in July and August, a heavy time for paying property and motor vehicle taxes, some of which are made in cash. The city recently adopted a new policy to round to the nearest nickel in the event that its supply for one-cent coins gets depleted.

The U.S. Mint estimates that there are 300 billion pennies in circulation — three times the number of stars believed to be in the Milky Way — with a 230-year-plus history behind them. But a majority of those are not actively used and without a fresh supply from the Mint, a shortage has taken hold.

The decision to halt one-cent coin production is estimated to save $56 million annually, according to the Mint.

A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta noted that cash transactions further declined in 2024, representing just 14% of expenditures in the United States. That was down from 20% in 2020.

Those statistics suggest the penny shortage will not significantly touch all consumers. But it could affect some of the more vulnerable segments of the population, including older adults and lower-income individuals who are more likely to pay with cash, according to Roberto Duncan, a professor of economics at Ohio University.

And if businesses decide to round up, “their customers may feel disappointed or dissatisfied,” Duncan wrote recently in a university publication.

‘Wild West out there’

Retail industry groups in Connecticut say some of their members started seeing penny shortages as early as September. That was well before the mint ceased production of the coin on Nov. 12, primarily because the one-cent piece now costs nearly four times to make than its value as currency.

Since the fall, industry groups such as the Connecticut Food Association, which represent grocers and others in the food business, have advised their members to use federal recommendations for rounding purchases to the nearest nickel, with the advice pertaining only to cash.

Wayne Pesce, CFA’s president, said the association gave that advice in the absence of the state taking a position on the issue.

“It was bit like the Wild West out there,” Pesce said.

The U.S. Treasury‘s recommendation is fairly straightforward: If the final digit of the transaction ends in 1,2, 6 or 7 cents, then the total, including sales tax, is rounded down to the nearest nickel. If the final digit is 3, 4, 8 or 9 cents, the total should be rounded up.

In theory, the burden on the merchant and the customer would even out over time.

But last week, the state Department of Consumer Protection weighed in on the matter, advising that all transactions should be rounded down to comply with an existing law in Connecticut.

The law mandates that a customer paying with cash cannot be charged more than someone paying with credit. In some cases, rounding up would mean cash-paying customers would pay more, if just by a few cents.

“We had heard that places were doing things differently,” Kaitlyn Krasselt, a DCP spokesperson, said. “It’s clear that you cannot charge more for using cash than another form of payment. We’re always going to go in favor of the consumer. We’re the consumer protection agency.”

Consistently rounding down, however, could place an unfair burden on small businesses with slim profit margins.

Robert Rybick, the president and chief executive of Geissler’s Supermarkets, said he foresees an affect on his family-run grocery, which has five stores in Connecticut and one in nearby Massachusetts.

“It doesn’t help in the sense that groceries are a 1% business, meaning we’re making one penny on every dollar,” Rybick said. “So when you tell us to round down, it affects the bottom line. A lot. Some of our stores are doing 30% cash.”

The CFA’s Pesce said he will revise his advice on the rounding issue to association members.

But Pesce said there is growing support among businesses across the board to propose changes to the state law that institute the rounding up and down to more evenly divide the effects of any penny shortage equally between businesses and consumers.

Pesce said he already has contacted state legislators and he hopes the General Assembly will consider the proposal in the session that begins Feb. 4.

A similar proposal is pending on the federal level, but it is unclear when that might be enacted, Pesce said.

“We are looking for a balance,” Pesce said. “The consumer shouldn’t get screwed and the merchants shouldn’t get screwed either. We’ve done rounding in Canada and other countries in the world. It’s easier. People get used to it. Let’s just move forward.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve last week pushed ahead with an effort to help shore up the country’s supply of pennies now that the coin is no longer being minted.

Could be worth something

In meantime, Bristol Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu said the city turned to an unlikely source to bolster its stockpile of pennies.

“We want to be able to provide the pennies and not have all the drama,” Zoppo-Sassu said. “So I commandeered my mother-in-law’s penny collection, which yielded us $63 in pennies, and that’s what we are using. We purchased her jar.”

Zoppo-Sassu said she hopes those one-cent coins will carry through January and February.

Outside the Dollar Tree in Plainville, Samuel Cruz of New Britain said he has taken to carrying loose change, including pennies, when he goes shopping.

But Cruz said he isn’t ready to break into containers at home that are jammed with pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters.

“My father was like, ‘Bro, pennies are probably going to be more valuable if you hold on to them,” Cruz said. “There could be a rare penny in there.”

Original Article found on MSN

With food insecurity on the rise and changes to programs like SNAP, some Connecticut lawmakers are making a renewed push to pass legislation during the 2026 session that would guarantee universal meals for students across the state, regardless of their school district. Currently, students have access to a mix of free, reduced price and paid meals, depending on household income, with some districts opting to provide free meals to all children.

Here’s what you need to know about universal school meals in Connecticut and why it may come up in next year’s legislative session.

Who is eligible for free school meals in Connecticut?

There are three ways student meals work in Connecticut schools.

First, there are students who get free meals — meaning breakfast and lunch. A family of four qualifies if they make less than $41,795 before taxes for the 2025-26 school year.

There are also students whose families pay a reduced fee for school meals. Again for a family of four, these families must make less than $59,478 before taxes.

And there are students whose families pay full price because their income exceeds the limits for free or reduced price meals. Lunch for these students typically costs between $3 and $4.50 depending on the school district.

Under the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, if more than 25% of a school’s population qualifies for free meals, then the school can choose to serve all students free breakfast and lunch. The school can then be reimbursed with federal funds, at a rate of 1.6. That means, if 40% of students at the school qualify for free meals, the school will be reimbursed for 1.6 times that amount, or 64%. The school will then have to find funds within its budget for the other 36% of the student population’s meals. Some districts have a high enough percentage of students who qualify that they do not have to contribute any additional funds.

There are also a handful of districts that provide universal breakfast, but not lunch.

How many Connecticut districts offer free meals to students?

Currently, 63 districts participate, but at 12 of those districts the program is only available at some of the schools. That’s out of a total of 202 school districts in the state.

My district used to offer universal meals but doesn’t anymore. Why?

In 2023, the FDA changed the CEP provision so that schools with 25% of students qualifying for free meals could opt-in to provide universal meals. Previously, the threshold was set at 40%. Some Connecticut school districts that fell within that 25% to 40% range decided to opt-in, but later determined the program was too expensive to continue and chose to opt back out.

What kind of food do students receive as part of universal meals in Connecticut?

There is no universal menu that school districts must follow in Connecticut, so different districts contract with different vendors. But all student lunches must include five components: a dairy, protein, starch, vegetable and fruit.

Why do lawmakers and advocates want to provide universal meals in Connecticut, even in wealthy districts?

Food insecurity is hitting Connecticut residents hard. Disruptions to programs like SNAP caused by the government shutdown and populations being shut out of the program altogether have renewed calls for the state to do what it can to ensure that children are fed. The One Big Beautiful Bill act excludes certain groups from SNAP benefits, including refugees and asylum seekers from access to SNAP benefits as well as some young adults, veterans and people experiencing homelessness.

But even before those restrictions were put in place, lawmakers in Connecticut have advocated for universal school meals for a number of reasons.

While some school districts in Connecticut may have a low percentage of students who quality for free meals, lawmakers and advocates say that making such meals universal has a number of benefits. First, when meals are available at no cost, participation in these programs go up.

“It changes the culture of the school meal program,” said Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health at the University of Connecticut. “It doesn’t become just a program seen as something low-income kids participate in, it becomes something everybody does,” reducing stigma and ensuring that kids who are hungry are fed. Children with full bellies, advocates say, are able to focus on learning.

Making such a program universal would also cut out the cost and time of the paperwork associated with parsing what meals are available to which students. That would allow directors of food programs to focus their time and energy on getting the best quality food to their students. Feeding more kids would also give smaller districts greater purchasing power to make bulk deals with vendors.

In Connecticut, the high cost of living also means that there are many families who do not currently qualify for free meals, but who are struggling with the cost of groceries and would greatly benefit, according to Schwartz.

“The gap between the amount you can make to no longer qualify and amount of money you need to take care of a family of four in Connecticut is many thousands of dollars, and in that gap are a lot of people who need help and aren’t getting it,” she said. Because low- income families qualify for free lunch, Schwartz said that most people assume that all kids who need free meals get them. “No, they don’t!” she said. “They don’t!”

How would Connecticut fund universal meals?

That remains to be seen, but one of the proposals on the table is a tax on sugary drinks. Schwartz, for one, is in favor of this idea.

“I thought that was the most brilliant idea I had ever heard,” she said. “A public health home run.” Because drinks like soda are linked with negative health outcomes, cities across the U.S. have used such taxes as a method to fight obesity and diabetes while simultaneously raising money for quality of life improvements for their citizens.

Philadelphia, for example, taxes such drinks at 1.5 cents per ounce and has used those funds to pay for a free preschool program, among other initiatives.

Original article found on CT Mirror

Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill last month intending to prevent hordes of out-of-state traffickers from making an extra nickel in Connecticut by collecting a 10-cent refund on cans and bottles that required only a 5-cent deposit in their state.

But there is no hard evidence that such widespread fraud is happening.

In the last quarter of 2024, the bottle return rate in Connecticut reached 77%, the highest it’s ever been.

But instead of viewing the increased redemption as a consumer response to the 10-cent deposit introduced last year, lawmakers who supported the legislation blamed out-of-state returns, which are illegal.

Sen. Rick Lopes, D-New Britain, told The Connecticut Mirror that the new legislation is “trying to target the people who have a box truck that are coming in from out of state.”

However, there is no record of how many out-of-state bottles are redeemed in Connecticut. Most distributors do not differentiate their bottles by state, meaning there is no way to tell which bottles were sold in Connecticut and which ones were not.

Bob Hanna, owner of Three Veterans redemption center in New Milford, believes that the problem of fraudulent returns is only solvable with technology. Brands that are both a manufacturer and distributor, such as Poland Spring, have taken to placing a red box around the barcodes of bottles they sell in non-redeemable states. If a customer attempts to feed one of these bottles into a redemption machine, it gets spat out. 

“There could be a solution to identify these products through barcodes,” says Hanna. “But distributors don’t have power with the manufacturers.”

Since he opened last year, Hanna estimates he’s turned away about 40 out-of-state returners, compared to his 850 regulars.

“The word’s gotten out — you’re not going to get by us,” he said.

Hanna requires his customers to provide proof of Connecticut residency and gives car stickers to his regulars. But still, residency is only a proxy for knowing whether the bottles themselves were purchased in Connecticut. 

The legislation limits individuals to redeeming 5,000 bottles a day and requires redemption centers to record the name, driver’s license and license plate of anyone returning over 2,500 bottles. It also allocates $2 million from the General Fund towards bottle redemption law enforcement. 

Hanna has customers who return bottles that they did not purchase themselves. A Boy Scouts troop, for example, brought in 13,000 after a clean-up project. Some patrons regularly return cans they fish out of the trash after local baseball games.

“Just because you don’t need the dime, or I don’t need the dime, I save all mine, and I don’t necessarily need it, but why am I going to give it to the state? Why am I going to give it to the distributors?”

When Connecticut bottles are not redeemed, the 10-cent deposit is shared among distributors and the state. In fiscal year 2023-2024, the state made over $42 million in revenue from unclaimed bottle deposits.

“I just believe [the new legislation] is a money grab for not only the state but for distributors,” Hanna said. 

There is no public data on where bottles are being redeemed; DEEP considers this information proprietary.

Disclosure of returns is up to the beverage distributors. In testimony in support of SB 1115, Coca-Cola Beverage Northeast said that its Q4 2024 redemption rate in border areas was 83%, compared to 61% in the middle of Connecticut, and that this was evidence of fraud, despite the lack of data regarding bottle origins.

Wayne Pesce, President of CT Food Association, draws his conclusion from images and videos he’s seen from grocery stores, such as a man unloading an SUV full of bottle bags, and cars in a parking lot with out-of-state license plates. 

“We are trying to limit fraudulent volume because our customers can’t get into our stores when someone comes back with 500 containers and Mrs. Johnson can’t get in with her 50,” he said.

On a recent weekday afternoon, the redemption room at the Big Y supermarket in Westport was empty. Store managers said they have not had problems with large volumes of bottle returns, and they have not heard of problems at any other Big Ys.

Even though redemption rooms in grocery stores are small, they take up valuable space. Groceries would rather sell mulch, winter salt, or literally anything else more profitable than the 2.5¢ per malt beverage, 3.5¢ for soft drink handling fee they receive for every bottle they process.

“There’s no profit incentive for a retailer in the state of Connecticut to redeem bottles and cans. Zero,” says Pesce. 

“We’re paying our associates $20 an hour, and our bottle rooms are open for the hours of the store,” says Pesce. “We’ve got to keep them clean, and we’ve got to pay labor to do it.” 

Meanwhile, redemption centers like Three Veterans LLC in New Milford have worked to make a profit since the raise to 10¢. Hanna estimates they process 15,000 bottles each day they are open. They allow their customers to drop off bottle bags for their workers to process.

“They get some time back, that’s all we can offer them,” he said. 

Redemption center owners are skeptical that the new teeth in the law will catch the amount of fraud others are so certain is there.

“It’s just like the guy who can walk up through a soda machine, kick it three times and hit the return button and get a soda for free,” says Hanna.

A nationwide coordinated crackdown on retail crime — what authorities are calling the first of its kind — led to hundreds of arrests in 28 states last week.

The blitz, led by Illinois’ Cook County regional organized crime task force, involved more than 100 jurisdictions and over 30 retailers including Home Depot, Macy’s, Target, Ulta Beauty, Walgreens, Krogerand Meijer.

“When you give specific focus to a crime, it reverberates,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told CNBC. “When they see it is being prosecuted and taken seriously, it deters conduct. They don’t want to get caught.”

Organized retail crime — a type of shoplifting where groups of thieves work together in targeted operations to turn stolen goods into cash — has grown in scale and scope in recent years. CNBC previously reported on the extensive law enforcement efforts to take down retail crime organizations.

While aggregate numbers for retail theft are difficult to quantify, retailers reported 93% more shoplifting incidents on average in 2023 compared with 2019, according to a survey conducted by the National Retail Federation. Those surveyed also reported a 90% increase in the associated dollar losses over that same time period.

Some critics point to a lack of enforcement and felony thresholds for allowing criminals to continue committing theft. It’s something Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke has been focused on since taking office in December. 

On her first day in office, O’Neill Burke said prosecutors would pursue felony retail theft charges in accordance with state law, when the value of the goods exceeds $300 or when the suspect already has a felony shoplifting conviction.

Before her taking office, retail theft felonies were charged only if the value of the stolen goods was $1,000 or more or if the suspect had 10 or more prior convictions.

Since Dec. 1, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has filed charges in 1,450 felony retail theft cases, the office said.

The goals of the coordinated operation, O’Neill Burke told CNBC, is “to have one day where we focus and concentrate on [retail theft] and we share intelligence about it — about what we learned about the network, so that gives us more tools on how to take this network down.”

It was the coordination between law enforcement and prosecuting attorneys that got a number of the involved retailers to participate in the blitz.

“Collaboration is key to making a meaningful impact,” Ulta Beauty Senior Vice President of Loss Prevention Dan Petrousek told CNBC. “That’s why we were proud to participate in the National ORC Blitz alongside dedicated law enforcement and prosecutorial partners.”

Ulta Beauty had teams participating across nine states in last week’s operation, providing law enforcement with information on incidents of retail crime.

“Organized retail crime remains one of the most significant challenges in our industry,” said Marty Maloney, Walgreens director of media relations. “In this most recent operation we worked closely with law enforcement partners across nearly 20 cities and at over 40 locations to help curb this trend.” 

A representative for Home Depot told CNBC that while overall theft is down, investigated incidents of organized retail crime are still up double digits year over year.

Now that the operation has concluded, the group is pulling together each jurisdictions’ observations and sharing data to continue to help crack down on retail theft.

Other participating retailers reached for comment by CNBC, including Macy’s, T.J. Maxx and Target, said they’re committed to partnering with law enforcement and pushing for stronger laws to combat retail crime.