controller

The state controller’s monthly cash report through December is out today and on the face of it there is less revenue than anticipated and more expenditure than anticipated for the first half of the year.  However, the controller in footnotes and in a supplementary statement attributes these results to timing rather than some fundamental departure from budgetary expectations.  Certain sales tax receipts that would normally have gotten into the general fund in December were not transferred there until January.  And certain local expenditures were paid out earlier than had been expected. In any event, these figures are too recent to…

Readers of this blog and state budget aficionados will recall that in June 2011, the legislature assumed $4 billion in a kind of extra phantom revenue that was unallocated among the various taxes the state was projected to collect.  Essentially, the legislature and governor assumed that a windfall would arise somewhere, but no one could say precisely where.  Nonetheless, that assumption allowed passage of a budget by a simple majority vote that was ostensibly “balanced” by some definition.   Not surprisingly, now that the state controller has released the cash flows for full fiscal year 2011-12 (which ended June 30,…

Last year, the legislature, after some dramatic moments described in an earlier post, passed a budget with phantom revenue of an extra $4 billion. This added revenue, above and beyond what was forecast for any particular tax, was assumed to materialize somewhere – although no one could specify where. Today, the state controller has issued his cash statement for the first eleven months of this fiscal year and it appears that revenues so far are short by – you’ll never guess! – $4 billion compared to the budget passed last June. Must be a coincidence. In any case, you can…

The state controller’s cash report for the fiscal year through April is now out.  Despite the blip in tax receipts in April due to the seasonal impact of the  income tax, revenues are down by over $3 billion compared to what the governor had forecast in January.  Compared to what the budget enacted last June for 2011-12 had projected, we are down over $5 billion. How all of this will play out with regard to the governor’s tax initiative in November is unclear.  The kind of cash problems that led to IOUs in 2009 are unlikely to repeat.  Thanks to…

Readers of this blog will know that tax aficionados track the April state income tax receipts since April is the big month for those receipts.  As it turned out, and despite some initial optimism in the early part of the month, income tax revenue came in a little under last year’s total and about $2 billion below what the governor had forecast. The daily tracker is athttp://www.sco.ca.gov/april_2012_personal_income_tax_tracker.html Maybe the best things in life are free but…[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_DJhEXmOmY&w=320&h=195]

Everett Dirksen, who was the GOP minority leader in the U.S. Senate in the 1960s, was famous for saying (about the federal budget), “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Actually, no one has produced evidence that he really said it.  However, the quote’s relevance today is on the latest data from the state controller on the daily intake of income tax payments – which peak in April for obvious reasons. The daily tracker on the controller’s website which was noted in an earlier post on this blog reports that as of April…