Today’s official revenue forecast went according to the well-worn script. Bad news accumulates. As Kriss anticipated in our earlier blog post on the collections report, the ending balance for the current biennium, which ends in a couple of weeks, vanished.
The balance sheet distributed today shows the current biennium with a negative ending balance of $84 million. Of greater concern is the slim reserve of $163.3 million projected for the end of the 2011-13 biennium.
The math is not straightforward. State economist Arun Raha reports a baseline forecast for 2011-13 that is down $183 million from the March forecast, a dip of 0.6 percent. The balance sheet, which includes other adjustments, notes a $387.1 million drop.
When you back out amnesty revenues (which budget writers had already booked and which Sen. Joe Zarelli called “the big bogey” in the calculations), revenues through FY 2013 are expected to be down $572 million from budget — $185 million in the current biennium and the previously mentioned $387.1 million in the next.
Press coverage in the Seattle PI, Seattle Times, Everett Herald, Capitol Record, and The News Tribune.
Washington Research Council 