Kevin Landrigan takes up most of this Sunday column in the Nashua Telegraph covering politics, which is fine if you're interested in that sort of thing. Towards the end of the column, he reports on some budget analysis from State Representative Steve Vaillancourt on how far off the state's revenue estimates were for the last two years.
Off estimates
Let's hope legislative revenue experts are more accurate in their relatively conservative forecasts for the next year than they have been in the last one.
Rep. Steve Vaillancourt, R-Manchester, gives an assist with analysis.
Taxes and fees came up a stunning $307 million short in fiscal year 2009 for a 12.2 percent shortfall.
That's the worst estimating job the state has seen going back at least to 1998, the next biggest disappointment when the slippage was $543 million or 2.7 percent. (more)
Defenders of the disastrous 2008-2009 budget now claim that the national economic downturn is solely to blame for the revenue shortfall, but that's not true. The economy certainly hurt revenues throughout 2009, but this budget never had a chance of being balanced. Revenues were going to be far short of estimates before the ink was dry on the budget.
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