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 »