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Well, would you look at that? The RI budget is still balanced

WPRI.COM

Ted Nesi

Updated: Jan 2, 2012 11:09 PM

State lawmakers return to the State House at 4 p.m. Tuesday to kick off the 2012 legislative session. The AP’s David Klepper offered a solid rundown Monday of the big issues on the table.

One headache lawmakers aren’t facing – to their great relief – is a round of midyear budget cuts and tax increases. That’s because, for the second year in a row, the amount of money coming into the state treasury is working out about as they expected last spring when they passed the $7.7 billion budget for 2011-12.

Rhode Island’s state government took in $1.13 billion in revenue from July 1 to Nov. 30, which is $43 million more than the number-crunchers had projected. That gives the state a surplus of 4% for the fiscal year’s first five months. Personal income tax, the state’s top source of revenue, has come in 5.6% above expectations, while sales tax revenue has been basically on target. That’s mainly because the economy hasn’t veered off track.

Rewriting the budget halfway through the fiscal year, by passing what insiders refer to as “a supplemental,” was a painful perennial problem during Governor Carcieri’s second term. The most memorable fight was in 2010, when the House and Senate passed competing supplementals – a rare public dispute between the two chambers that took place shortly after Gordon Fox succeeded Bill Murphy as House speaker.

So far, though, Governor Chafee hasn’t had to sign a supplemental: the last budget passed under Carcieri (which he didn’t sign or veto) stayed balanced, and it looks like this year’s will, too. But that just means the new administration has only had to do one round of cuts and hikes, rather than two: this year’s budget closed a $331 million shortfall and next year’s is facing a $120 million gap.

And of course, each year’s shortfall is on top of the previous year’s. When you add it all up, Rhode Island lawmakers have closed a whopping $2.3 billion in budget deficits since 2007-08, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates.

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