The Bureau of Finance and Management and the Legislative Research Council issued mixed fiscal projections today.
To be clear, both agencies agree we’re going to have more money to run the state than we did last year. The LRC is slightly more optimistic, saying we’ll have $61.5 million more than last fiscal year and will even beat the Legislature’s winter projection by a million and a half, or 0.09% more than we hoped. The BFM says we’ll have $50.8 million more in revenues than last fiscal year, but that’s 0.5% lower than the revenue guess adopted in Pierre in February.
Both agencies agree that our sales tax revenue projections were excessively optimistic. LRC says sales tax will be $9.9 million lower than, or 0.96% below, the February guess. BFM says sales tax will fall $11.2 million, 1.04%, short of the original projection. Come on, Trumpistan: those tax cuts Il Duce and his minions gave you were supposed to make you an economic powerhouse again! Get out there and buy more stuff!
Shoring up weak sales tax will be stronger-than-expected revenues from investment income and interest, bank franchise tax, lottery tickets, and 19.35-million-dollar surplus carried forward from last year.
BFM notes that even its shortfall falls short of the 2.5% threshold that would require BFM, LRC, the Governor, and a special committee to sharpen their pencils and write up a plan to close the budget gap. We can cruise mostly safely to the 2020 Session, when we’ll see how badly a second year of Trump tariffs and other chaos from the top sandbag our sales tax.