By KAREN KASLER
The state budget office’s forecasts of how much money would come in each month continue to be very close to reality, as of the totals from the first six months of this fiscal year.
Personal income tax revenues were off estimates by less than a million dollars, but the state is still up more than $27 million. And for all income, sales and other taxes taken in, state budget director Tim Keen says while those were down almost $12 million last month, the state is running a $17.5 million surplus. “Given the fact that last year we had significant challenges and we missed our estimates substantially, we worked real hard when we put the budget together to have conservative estimates to base the budget upon.”
Last fiscal year, revenues coming in were off projections for 11 of 12 months, leading to a budget deficit of almost a billion dollars.
