March 23, 2017      4:54 PM
Greenfield: State Revenue Situation, Improving, but Not Great
As the House and Senate stake out their positions on the budget, our resident number cruncher Dr. Stuart Greenfield takes a look at the improving revenue situation. Tomorrow, he’ll look at the expenditure side of the equation
State revenue
receipts, unlike Gaul, can be divided
into two parts, General Revenue-Related
(GRR) and non-GRR. The former is the
revenue stream that our legislators can
appropriate with their complete discretion, while the latter, e.g., federal
funds, is dedicated to a specific
government activity, e.g., Medicaid, public education.
When Comptroller Glenn Hegar released the Biennial Revenue Estimate (BRE) for FY18-19 on January 9, 2017, all
hands immediately turned to Table A-1 which shows the funds that the
Comptroller certifies is available to the Legislator to appropriate. Table A-1
shows $104.9 billion available for the 85th Legislature for
discretionary spending.
This $104.9 billion
is $5.4 billion less than the Comptroller stated in the Certification Estimate,
released in October 2015, would be available for FY16-17 and $2.9 billion less
than the amount for FY16-17 in the current estimate. This reduction in available revenue was anticipated, and the Governor and
Legislative Budget Board took actions, hiring freeze, to reduce state
expenditures for FY17.
The complete column by
Dr. Stuart Greenfield is in the R&D Department.
By Dr. Stuart Greenfield
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Copyright March 23, 2017, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved
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