Timing can be an elected official’s best friend or enemy. For Governor Ned Lamont the early timing is a windfall cutting into an inherited projected shortfall. From Keith Phaneuf, CT Mirror:
State income tax revenues surged upward again Tuesday, and this time it could be the middle class–not the wealthy–behind most of the gains.
A new report from fiscal analysts projects overall revenues this fiscal year will surpass budgeted expectations by $464 million–an improvement of $204 million from a rosy revised forecast issued in mid-November. A surplus was already projected for this year, and the new forecast enlarges it.
The consensus report from Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget staff and from the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis also anticipates an additional $260 million in revenue for the 2019-20 fiscal year that starts July 1–dropping the potential shortfall well under $1.5 billion, from about $1.7 million.
Full story here.
We’re in an “old” economic recovery (which is not even at break-even yet for CT), with a gyrating stock market, trending downward, increasingly indebted consumer section, housing sector that is still weak in much of the US (albeit, with significant inflation in the rental section, due to reluctance to purchase by much of a gun-shy, lower-income, recession-recovering middle class…), weakening appliance and automobile sectors… In other words, CT has a weak economy, still in recession from 10 years ago, and heading towards being part of national/global recession (the latter being led by weakness in the Chinese economy due to trade pressures and the loss of momentum of the normal economic cycle…).
So we shouldn’t be too gleeful in CT yet…
We are under a huge, permanent, structural level of government indebtedness with large budget-deficits looming for the foreseeable future… We have are still looking at a $billion+ for the next budget even with our new, “optimistic” revenue forecasts…
More rough times and tax increases are coming…
Ned has to figure out how to drastically grow our economy in a short period of time, or he’s going to be a one-termer keeping, company with Dan, and fielding calls from Governor Stemerman about where the keys to the booze locker in the leadership offices of the Old Capital building are kept…
Ooh rah…