Interesting Reading

The latest version of the Commonwealth’s Information Statement Supplement , the best source of concrete financial data on our state, is out. A few nuggets:

• The Surplus: pg. A-1 — The State ended up with a fiscal 2007 surplus of $190.9 million. Of course, there was a supplemental budget passed in October (for FY2007) that spent $212.1m and rolled over $60m in unexpended funds. Thus, without that supp, there would have been a surplus of $462m.
• Lottery Deficit: pg. A-2 — The lottery was short by $119m and will be short by $124m next year, unless sales pick up significantly.  That’s $243m that the state needs to make up somewhere.
• Taxes: pg. A-3 — FY2007 tax revenues exceeded projections by over $400 million.
• Single-Party Harmony?: pg. A-3 — The Governor vetoed $40.7m in spending for FY08 and the Legislature has overridden $36.9m of that, thus far.
• Maxing Out the Credit Card: pg. A-7 — The Commonwealth expects to issue the full allowable amount of commercial paper, $1 billion, before April.
• Tax Cuts?: pg. A-7 — A few ballot initiatives are making their way through the process — one would eliminate the income tax, another would phase it out, and a third would change Prop. 2.5 to Prop. 1%.
• The $500M Plug: pg. A-16 — The capital funding plan contains about $500 million in ‘project-funded bonds’ over the next 5 years. This appears to be DIF-style funding, but there’s never been DIF funding at this volume anywhere.
• Good Luck: pg. A – 20 — Over 90% of Executive Branch’s union employees will have their contracts expire by June 2008.