Not that Louisiana state government's fiscal challenges aren't tough - what with a $1.3 billion revenue decline for the upcoming fiscal year. But a new report by MSNBC, surveying the fiscal landscape of states across the country, does add some perspective.
The Ohio Senate is considering a $54 billion two-year budget passed by the House that was balanced by cutting education spending by $244 million, depleting the state's reserves of $1 billion and incorporating $2.2 billion of federal stimulus money. Even then, the plan includes projected deficits of at least $2.5 billion in each of the next two years.
The Indiana State Budget Committee last week requested a new, more accurate revenue forecast for lawmakers to use in a pending special session after April tax revenue fell $255 million short of what had been forecast just one month earlier.
In Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn is seeking a 4.5 percent state income tax increase to close a deficit of nearly $12 billion. Otherwise, he said, the state faces a “doomsday” budget that would lay off 7,000 teachers and half of the state's troopers and eliminate health care for 650,000 people.
Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire last week signed a two-year budget that closed a $9 billion shortfall by cutting 40 percent in state payments for low-income health coverage, raising state employees' health care benefits by less than half the rate of inflation and reducing per-student education allocations.
In Oregon, where the projected shortfall of $3.8 billion is equal to nearly a third of the overall budget, Democratic lawmakers proposed a 2009-11 budget that would eliminate 1,700 state pensions, cut spending on community colleges and higher education and seek $800 million in new taxes.
