LANSING – If the state ends up adopting a 2009-10 budget on the lines of that adopted last week by the Legislature, it would go into the 2010-11 budget with a potential general fund deficit of $782.9 million, a memo from the Senate Fiscal Agency said.
And to keep the state at that general fund deficit will require the state continue the $842 million in general fund cuts the Legislature enacted as part of the 2009-10 budget, cuts that are being fought by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
The memo from SFA Executive Director Gary Olson was issued Friday, and it examines the overall impact of the budget as adopted. So far, the only measure the Legislature has not passed is a K-12 school aid budget.
About half the budget bills have also not yet gone to Granholm because the Senate is holding them pending motions to reconsider on immediate effect. The state is operating now on the basis of a continuation budget that expires at the end of the month.
According to the memo, the overall budget proposal uses more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money for 2009-10 that reduces the availability of federal money in the 2010-11 fiscal year.
In addition, even with all the cuts enacted in the new budget, the state will still have a slight shortfall of less than $7 million. That will further reduce the funding available for the next fiscal year, the memo said.
Helping the state situation, the SFA memo projects general fund revenues should be better in 2010-11 than they are anticipated to be in 2009-10. For the current fiscal year, the state is anticipating general fund revenues of $7.7 billion. That should increase to slightly more than $8 billion in 2010-11.
However, the anticipated general fund budget, which is now expected to total $9.5 billion, would increase to $10 billion.
The memo projects that even with the slight general fund shortfall, the state would have a carry-forward into the 2010-11 fiscal year of $202.7 million from federal stimulus monies.
That added with the ongoing $842.8 million in cuts and another $209.6 million in stimulus monies means the state could have an anticipated shortfall of $782.9 million.
If that shortfall was eliminated with all cuts, the cuts would equal 9.7 percent of all the 2009-10 general fund appropriations, the memo said.
Granholm and legislative Democrats are calling for the Legislature to raise revenues as part of the overall 2009-10 budget. In part, those are needed, she said last week, because the Legislature relies on too much in stimulus funding, which will make the task of balancing the 2010-11 budget that much more difficult.
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