Ailing State Budgets in the News

I'm a day late with this (and the states are many dollars short).

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story with a tells-it-all headline, States Slammed by Tax Shortfalls. It may be the first time that the National Conference of State Legislatures annual June budget update received play like that from the WSJ. Announcing a $40 billion shortfall will get you that kind of attention.

The stumbling U.S. economy is forcing states to slash spending and cut jobs in order to close a projected $40 billion shortfall in the current fiscal year.

That gap -- identified Wednesday in a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures -- is more than triple the size of the previous year's. It is the result of broad economic weakness at the state and local levels that could cause pain throughout this year and into 2010.

Washingtonians who saw the story and the US map highlighting state budget conditions may have been comforted to see that our state was not identified among the states experiencing a shortfall. We shouldn't get too comfortable. As most of us acknowledge, our state faces a $2.7 billion shortfall in the next biennium.

As Chris Mulick writes on his Tri-Cities Herald blog, other states are (gasp!) cutting spending. He links to a Stateline.org story that also drew from the NCSL update.

I'd like to hear more about what officials here plan to do. January is not that far off.