Shumlin: Vt. faces $88 million deficit
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By DAVE GRAM The Associated Press - Published: November 18, 2009
MONTPELIER — Vermont will face a deficit of at least $88 million in the coming budget cycle when state lawmakers resume their 2009-10 session in January, the Senate's highest-ranking Democrat said Tuesday.
"The economy's fallen apart, our revenues have plummeted and the state of Vermont's facing the toughest fiscal challenges in our history," Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin told more than 50 legislators and a couple dozen lobbyists gathered at the Statehouse for a budget briefing.
Shumlin, of Windham County, said that the estimate does not include an additional $22 million needed for the retirement fund the state maintains for teachers, $9 million in retirement funds for state employees and a projected $30 million for growth in caseloads for state health and other human services programs.
The state's current operating budget is more than $1 billion.
Gov. Jim Douglas' administration is going through its annual budget preparation process now for fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, and preparing a spending plan for Douglas to present to lawmakers in his annual budget address in January, said Jim Reardon, the state's commissioner of finance and management.
But Shumlin, House Speaker Shap Smith and others also noted several steps taken by them and by the Douglas administration to put the state in better shape than many others.
Among them: Douglas created "tiger teams," groups of state employees assigned to find efficiencies within their own agencies, and the Democrats who control the Legislature appointed a new committee on government accountability, which have been scouring government programs in search of efficiencies.
The state's payroll has been reduced from 3,397 employees in April of 2008 to 7,786 now, and more cuts are contemplated. Nonunion employees making more than $60,000 have taken 5 percent pay cuts or equivalent furloughs and have gone without raises for two years.
And as bad as the budget picture is in Vermont, it's far worse in other states. Vermont revenues have slid back to below 2005 levels, according to the Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office. Florida's have declined to 2001 levels, it added, and Michigan hasn't seen revenues as low as it's getting this year since 1988 — 21 years ago.
Tuesday's presentations came less than a week after the state's Emergency Board, made up of legislative budget writers and Douglas, got an updated revenue forecast saying the economic downturn appeared to have bottomed out but that the recovery would be slow and painful.
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