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Budget woes trickle down By SUE WATSON
Staff Writer With
state legislative budget committee meetings ongoing, county supervisors
have expressed a nagging worry that 2012 may be the year of the big
budget crunch for county governments. Gary
Anderson, consultant to the Marshall County Board of Supervisors,
advised the board to keep their eyes open to what goes on in state
budget hearings this fall. The shortfalls in
sales tax revenues and other revenues caused Gov. Haley Barbour to have
to balance the budget with $500 million out of the state revenue budget
of $5 billion for year 2009-10. Supervisors worry that those cuts, if
continued, will eventually have trickle-down effects on local
governments, particularly in year 2012, they said. The
legislative budget committee has work to do to find nearly $650 million
to plug revenue shortfalls expected in 2012, Anderson said. That
concern arises because reserves in the Rainy Day Fund and the Tobacco
Trust Fund are dwindling, he said. And federal stimulus dollars of
about $250 million earmarked for education in 2011 may be held until
2012 when they may be more direly needed, Anderson said. There
is about $177 million left in the Rainy Day Fund and about $150 million
in the Tobacco Trust Fund, two pools of money that are rapidly drying
up, he said. When Anderson was working as state
fiscal officer and executive director of the Department of Finance
Administration seven years ago, there was $850 million in the tobacco
fund, but legislative action to divert annual payments to the fund from
tobacco companies, and withdrawals from the corpus of the fund to plug
holes in the state budget, have caused the fund to dwindle, he said. Anderson
said lawyers working with the governor’s office and state Legislature
are looking to see if any of the stimulus money for education that
arrived in the summer this year can be held until the 2012 budget year
when it will be more direly needed. “It’s all a juggling act,” he told supervisors. He
said legislators were looking at the tax code for possible revenues
(increases) and that supervisors and the Mississippi Supervisors
Association should “watch the tax code.” Supervisor George Zinn III asked what the likelihood is that the governor will hold to his mantra – “no new taxes.” “Going
into the summer, I was of the opinion nobody wants to raise taxes in an
election year,” Anderson said. “However, there are lots of meetings
taking place. I am hearing it will be a multiple thing. Everybody will
bear some of the pain. That’s what I hear from the House and Senate. “It may not happen, but we have to make sure we’re keeping our eyes on the ball on this one.” The
second congressional stimulus passed in July 2010 is supposed to be
spent in the 2011 federal fiscal year which begins January 1, 2011, and
runs to December 31, 2011, Anderson said. Language in that federal
legislation says states cannot place those stimulus dollars in reserve
for fiscal year 2012, he said. Budget
tightening at the state level could mean a tax increase at the local
level because of unfunded mandatory legislation handed down to local
governments. State agencies are looking ahead to next year when stimulus dollars end and other one-time use monies won’t be around, he said. “So
they see the budget hole being significant next year,” he said. “The
Mississippi Association of Supervisors needs not to go to sleep.”
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