Trickle Effect: Arkansas Remains Solvent After Gov. Huckabee's term as governor

The following chart includes a list of the states and also shows which party has authority in them.


The Center on Budget and Policy Priority reports the following:

* Over half of the states are anticipating budget problems.

* The 20 states in which revenues are expected to fall short of the amount needed to support current services in fiscal year 2009 are Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The budget gaps total $35.2 to $38.0 billion, averaging 8.3 – 8.9 percent of these states’ general fund budgets. (See Table 1.)

* Another five have said that they will have deficits that will need to be closed for fiscal year 2009, but have not released information on the size of those deficits. They are Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Vermont. Analysts in three other states — Connecticut, Missouri, and Texas — are projecting budget gaps a little further down the road, in FY2010 and beyond.

What is interesting to me is the states that are not on this list as well as the states that are on this list. Arkansas is not listed on this list (though some conservative states are). This makes a statement about the fiscal policies that were set during Huckabee's governorship.