Last Wednesday the Fiscal Services Department put out a review of the Department budget requests requests for FY 2010. The budget requests are the jumping off point for the Governor’s budget, which will be released in January.

The current balance sheet, on page 13, does not include the spending reductions due to the 1.5 percent across the board cut, which the Governor announced Friday, December 19th. Even when the across-the-board cut is factored in, the spending gap in FY 2010 remains above $650 million. Medicaid accounts for the biggest chunk of the built-in spending, which is why the Governor is asking Congress to include a Medicaid bailout in the stimulus package expected to be approved in January.

The Governor has asked the state agencies to submit status quo budget requests. However, from Page 16 of the review:

Departments are requesting a total of $6.505 billion from the General Fund for FY 2010. This represents an increase of $353.6 million (5.7%) compared to estimated FY 2009. The Governor gave departments a directive to submit status quo budgets for FY 2010; however, state agencies were allowed to ask the Department of Management for exemptions. The directive did not apply to standing appropriations, elected officials, or the Legislative and Judicial Branches of government. In addition, some agencies chose to ignore the directive and included increases in the FY 2010 budgets. The departments also may not have included funding for the built‐in and anticipated increases in their requests.

While the Democrats continue to say that it’s a revenue problem that caused the budget mess, the Executive branch has not gotten the message that spending needs to be trimmed.

The detailed description of the requests begins on page 19 of the reprot. Click on the link below to view the entire report.

SUMMARY OF FY 2010 BUDGET AND DEPARTMENT REQUESTS – Fiscal Services Bureau (PDF – 2.8 MB)

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