There is no Christmas revenue gift for state lawmakers trying to find $1.2 billion to balance the state budget. Without resorting to more bad analogies (coal in stockings?), it looks as though they didn’t get any bad news either.
While the December collections report was down by $28.9 million, state forecaster Arun Raha and his staff conclude that the shortage is more a matter of timing than economics – “most of the shortfall was due to earlier-than-expected property tax payments that were already received last month.”
Overall since the November forecast, actual tax collections are just $9.2 million lower than expected. That’s as close to exact as the state should be able to expect. Even that shortage is blamed on one-time tax refunds that were sent out. Without those, state tax collections would be up slightly.
Here is how the forecasters summarize the current condition of the economy:
“Two months have passed since the November forecast and nothing has gone off the rails. Our preliminary economic forecast for the February cycle, due to be released later this month, is therefore not likely to be significantly different from that earlier one. But we cannot be altogether sanguine about it because the level of downside uncertainty in the baseline remains too high for comfort.”
Peter Callaghan petercallaghan@ thenewstribune.com
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