State Offices Argue Over Size Of Deficit We Face
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-budget0219.artfeb19,0,3833453.story
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
The Hartford Courant
February 19, 2009
When Gov. M. Jodi Rell delivered a rare, live, televised address to the state two weeks ago, she said the state budget deficit was bad and getting worse.
“The red ink for the next two years – the period covered by my proposed budget – is nearly $8 billion,” Rell said in a speech televised by the major local networks.
But when Rell unveiled her budget only two days later, she said the deficit over those two years was only $6 billion.
Some Democrats say Rell purposely avoided the worse numbers in her proposal so she would not need to offer deeper spending cuts or unpopular tax increases. Ever since then, legislators and budget analysts have been debating over the exact projected deficit, forecasting a volatile stock market and a weak economy nearly 30 months into the future.
On Wednesday, the top budget analysts from Rell’s office, the legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal office and the state comptroller’s office met for about one hour in an attempt to reconcile the numbers – which would be the first step toward a budget deal.
When the smoke cleared, they still had not resolved the issue.
State Comptroller Nancy Wyman said her budget analyst, John Clark, was prepared to justify the comptroller’s projections in every tax category but was never asked for details or hard data. Wyman’s office makes only current-year projections and estimates the current deficit at $1.1 billion. Rell’s current-year estimate is $922 million.
“It was not a very specific discussion,” said Wyman, a Democrat. “This was more political than it was substantial.”
Geary Maher, the director of the legislature’s Office of Fiscal Analysis, said his office is taking a “less optimistic” view of the economy than the governor’s budget office and is projecting that the state income tax will fall further than Rell’s office projects. Those different assumptions have led directly to the contrasting projections. Maher’s office is forecasting a two-year deficit of $8.7 billion and a current-year deficit of $1.3 billion.
“That’s all part of estimating and projecting,” Maher said. “We’re comfortable with ours, and they’re comfortable with theirs. We’re not really sure if we’ve hit the bottom in terms of unemployment. … Estimating is not an exact science, and each of us recognizes that. It’s not unusual to come to different conclusions.”
But Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D- New Haven, said: “The problem is it makes the governor’s budget seem more like a political document and not a true budget document. It’s more successful as a political strategy – inoculating the governor from offering a tax increase – but not as a comprehensive budget.”
Rell’s spokesman, Christopher Cooper, said Rell’s representatives viewed it as a productive meeting that could eventually lead to consensus.
“What’s getting lost here is the governor has been warning the legislature since September that the deficit has been getting worse every day,” Cooper said. “If the deficit is $6 billion or $8 billion, how does that prevent the Democrats [who control the legislature] from taking action on the first billion or the second billion or the third billion? So far, they haven’t.”
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