I really, really, really, get tired of it all, readers!!! Hate to say it again, readers, but ALL BEING DONE ON PURPOSE!!!!
"22 states facing budget gaps; More job cuts, service losses likely" by Richard Fausset and Nicholas Riccardi, Los Angeles Times | October 20, 2008
The moribund economy is drying up tax revenues more dramatically than expected, forcing 22 states to confront growing budget gaps. Some states already have eliminated jobs and services - and more cuts are likely.
The new shortfalls, totaling at least $11.2 billion, come just months after numerous states enacted belt-tightening measures while writing yearly budgets. Officials also adjusted their revenue projections downward to account for the slowing economy. But in many cases, the actual revenue for the first quarter of the fiscal year, which began July 1, has proven to be even lower.
The gaps "will almost certainly widen" as tax revenues continue to disappoint, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington, D.C., think tank that compiled the state data in a report this month. Economists and other observers fear the numbers may signal the onset of a historic fiscal crisis for state governments.
"States have been confronted with bad economic circumstances in the past, but never so many states, all at once," said Bill Pound, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The revenue pools are shrinking for a number reasons: Rising layoffs are cutting into payroll taxes. The credit crisis and housing slump are affecting taxes levied on real estate deals. Sales taxes are shrinking as shoppers worried about the economy stay home. Every state in the union but Vermont legally requires a balanced budget. So state governments have begun cutting.
In Utah, Governor John Huntsman called the Legislature back for a special session last month to slash $270 million, with a 3 percent across-the-board budget cut. Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia this month disclosed a sudden $900 million budget gap, and announced 500 layoffs, the suspension of 2 percent raises for state workers, and a hiring freeze. Georgia, faced with a $2 billion shortfall, is contemplating cuts of up to 10 percent at state agencies. Lawmakers are also discussing eliminating funding for the state's Music Hall of Fame in Otis Redding's hometown of Macon. When legislatures convene in January they will have to consider even harsher reductions, warned Donald Boyd, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, who tracks state budgets. "What states have done so far - still generally mild - pales in comparison to what they will do," he said.
The pain likely will spread beyond the warrens of state bureaucracy, as laid-off state workers and curtailed government spending help fuel a vicious economic cycle. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which typically takes a liberal view on policy issues, notes that as the economy declines, residents require more services from their state government, not fewer.
The only alternative to cutting services, a tax increase, has proven unpopular in a number of states, including California and Florida. --more--"Yeah, especially when you realize all the LOOTING by LAWMAKERS in this nation!!!
How many times I gotta post it, readers?
Of course, "flushing . . . millions of dollars away supporting a highly profitable industry" when it comes to $300 million in taxpayer dollars for Hollywood is o.k., even as the price of a school lunch rises; paying $13 million for a computer software system that could have cost less than $3 million is all right because the winner was a close friend of the House speaker, even as my poorer-than-dirt district "has been struggling to close a $2 million budget gap."; the lottery shelling out "millions of dollars" for sports tickets for "lottery officials, their family members, and friends" is fine, even as schools are closing; making interest payments to banks to the tune of "a staggering $22 billion" for the Big Pit, as we call it around here, is required, even as bridges are neglected across the state; and again, paying off banks like UBS, who can "demand repayment of an additional $2 million a month beginning in January" while also receiving a "$179 million payment," while the state pension fund loses $1 billion dollars -- which still didn't stop the executive director from carving himself a nice "$64,000 bonus on top of his $322,000 annual salary."
Oh, and did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer. Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
Nor is it RECKLESS to BORROW the STATE INTO OBLIVION so they can PAY INTEREST to BANKS while SITTING ON $2 BILLION DOLLARS!
Need one final insult, Mass. taxpayers?
See: Massachusetts Gives More Money to Hollywood
Yup, but they are going to CUT JOBS and SERVICES while telling us we need to keep the income tax!! Don't you just get SICK of the BULLSHIT?!!!!
