| Cross post from Jon Pelto's Wait What?
Yesterday Connecticut had a $60 million state budget. Today the deficit is headed toward $300 million and counting.
How is that possible?
Let's just say that this is what happens when an administration passes a budget that doesn't balance and then fails to tell the truth about what is happening with revenue and expenditures.
We'd have known about the dismal budget numbers earlier. In fact, under the original law, they were supposed to be released on October 15th, but a quiet change pushed off the reporting date until November 10th, thereby ensure that the information came to light after the election was over.
As usual, CT Mirror's Keith Phaneuf has the details.
Read it through - a couple of times - and I'll weigh in tomorrow to explain some of the behind the details tomorrow.
Ben Barnes, Malloy's Budget Chief proves, once again, that he is a top contender for the - are you kidding me quote - when he told the CTMirror, that the lower revenues are, "not surprising given the continued sluggishness of the national economic recovery...OPM has stated repeatedly that revenues would be monitored carefully because of the slow economy."
In the - can you believe their chutzpah department - look for the section in Phaneuf' s story where he reports that Malloy's budget office wrote that, "estimates that show state tax revenue is running approximately $52.7 million behind what was anticipated when the budget was passed ... last Spring."
OPM's claim is, to put it mildly, a complete and utter lie. As Phaneuf notes, "Technically, revenues for this year are $52.7 million below a consensus estimate prepared on April 30, 2012 - an estimate that was not included in the budget by the legislature's Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee," or the budget approved by the legislature. |
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