Facing sluggish economic forecasts amid low oil prices along with billions in tax revenue already dedicated to the state highway fund, Comptroller Glenn Hegarannounced Monday that lawmakers will have $104.87 billion in state funds at their disposal in crafting the next two-year budget, a 2.7 percent decrease from his estimate ahead of the legislative session two years ago.
Hegar told state lawmakers he expected a “slow to moderate” expansion of the Texas economy. Still, he said, the amount of revenue they will be able to negotiate over has fallen. That’s largely because lawmakers in 2015 moved to dedicate up to $5 billion in sales tax revenue every two years to the state’s highway fund, rather than being spent on other priorities such as schools, health care or reforms to the embattled Texas foster care system.
“We are projecting overall revenue growth,” Hegar said. “Such growth, however, is more than offset” by the demands of the state highway fund and other dedicated funds.
The revenue estimate does not determine the scope of the entire Texas budget. Rather, it sets a limit on the state’s general fund, the portion of the budget that lawmakers have the most control over. The general fund typically makes up about half of the state’s total budget.
Two years ago, Hegar estimated that the Legislature would have $113 billion in state funds, also known as general revenue. Adding in federal funds and other revenue sources, lawmakers would have $221 billion in total for its budget, as well as $11.1 billion in the state’s Rainy Day Fund, he said at the time. Lawmakers ultimately passed a $209.4 billion budget, which included billions in tax cuts.
On Monday, Hegar estimated lawmakers would have $104.87 billion in general revenue, and $224.8 billion in total revenue to write a budget for the 2018-19 biennium which begins in September.
See here for more on Hegar’s 2015 estimate, which would up being a tad bit optimistic, but not too far off. It won’t be surprising if this one is off a bit one way or the other – this is why 2014 Comptroller candidate Mike Collier called for more frequent revenue estimates during his campaign, so the course can be corrected as needed more often – but again I expect this to at least be in the ballpark. Assuming the economy doesn’t crash and burn and/or we don’t have ten percent annual growth under Dear Leader Trump, of course.
There are a lot of ingredients that go into making the budget sausage, and there are various things that can and will be done to avoid doing anything too painful. We could of course just assume this was a temporary dip and take a few bucks out of the Rainy Day Fund to smooth out the curve – that was its original purpose, after all; now it serves as a hole in the back yard into which we bury sacks of cash for no clear reason – but that isn’t going to happen. We do have your local property taxes bolstering the state’s bottom line, so be sure to send a thank you note to the State Supreme Court for that. And as always, remember that the biggest boost to spending in 2015 was tax cuts, but that’s never what the leadership has in mind when it says we need to “cut back” on expenses. We do things one way in this state, and will continue to do them that way until there are different people running the state. The Chron and BurkaBlog have more.