With the 2011 legislative session now wrapped up, we are pleased to release our FY ’12 Budget Highlights, a one-page summary analysis of the budget for the upcoming year, along with eight detailed charts and tables on revenues and appropriations.

A couple of the notable charts are excerpted below.

The state’s annual appropriated budget for FY ’12 is $6.511 billion. This is the third straight year of decreased funding for state agencies; total appropriations for next year will be $250 million less than in FY ’07. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s announcement of the monthly General Revenue collections brought incontestable good news:

State revenue collections in March topped prior year collections for the first time since December 2008 and the official estimate for a second consecutive month, State Treasurer Scott Meacham announced today.

Collections beat the official estimate by an impressive $81.4 million, or 25.5 percent. For the third quarter of FY ’10, collections fell short of the estimate by just 2.4 percent; by comparison, for the second quarter, revenues were more than 27 percent below the estimate.

Compared to the same month in 2009, collections in March were $6.4 million, or 1.6 percent, higher. The chart below, which we have been using in recent months to put this year’s collections in a longer-term perspective,  reveals the extent to which March marks a sharp and decisive upturn in revenues. The month’s collections were back to just over 90 percent of the average collection for the same month over the past five years.  In each of the previous nine months, collections remained mired below 85 percent of their five-year average. Read the rest of this entry »