No Runny Eggs

Buried in the FY2010/2011 Budget in Brief is a stinker of a table called the “General Fund Condition Under Governor’s Budget”. This year, it’s Table 9, on page 36 of the printed copy (page 39 of the PDF). It projects what the Department of Administration believes the proposed budget will do to the general fund in the biennium, as well as what it projects continuing that budget will do in the next one.

I would like to draw your attention to the “Balances” section of that chart, specfically what the 2011-2013 (FY2012/2013) projected balances are. The gross balance in FY2013 is projected to be -$559,500,000. For those that missed the minus sign, that’s a deficit of $559.5 million. That does not include the “required statutory” positive balance of $130 million, which would make the net deficit $689,500,000.

That is the second time a Doyle budget has admitted that it would short the following biennium budget. That is before the initial agency requests for mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money create a multi-billion deficit that supposedly gets filled. Let’s review the history of the Doyle budgets, with the previous budget’s projected surplus/deficit, and the “agency requests” deficit:

– FY2004/2005

• Previous budget (FY2002/2003) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2005 – unavailable (not part of Scott McCallum’s budget)
• “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2005 (from Table 3) – ($966 million) (note: to match up with succeeding budget formats, this does not include FY2003 deficits and adjustments or a decision to increase shared revenue funding, but does include the structural deficit and adjustments to FY2004/2005 revenue)

– FY2006/2007

• Previous budget (FY2004/2005) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2007 (from Table 6 of that budget) – $146 million (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $251.4 million)
• “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2007 (from Table 1) – ($1,666 million) (note: this does not include a re-estimate of the FY2005 Medical Assistance shortfall)

– FY2008/2009

• Previous budget (FY2006/2007) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2009 (from Table 5 of that budget) – ($232.7 million) (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $65 million)
• “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2009 (from Table 1) – ($1,654 million) (note: this does not include FY2007 shortfalls)

– FY2010/2011

• Previous budget (FY2008/2009) projected net surplus/(deficit) for FY2011 (from Table 8 of that budget) – $212.5 million (includes withholding a required statutory balance of $130 million)
• “Agency-request” net surplus/(deficit) for FY2011 (from Table 1) – ($5,945 million)

With that history of blowing budgets in mind, I present the latest NRE poll. What will the “agency-request” budget hole be next time around?

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