Dardenne: Last Fiscal Year Likely To End Up With A Deficit

Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne says there’s a good chance the state will end up with a deficit for the fiscal year that ended on June 30th. Dardenne says they are still waiting for all of the numbers to come in, so it’s hard to say how much that deficit will be. But he says a member of the Revenue Estimating Conference has an idea.

“Jim Richardson, a couple of months ago, suggested that there may be up to a $200 million shortfall in the previous fiscal year based upon numbers he was seeing,” Dardenne said.

Dardenne says this means that lawmakers will once again have an immediate budget problem to deal with when they convene for the fiscal session in 2017. He says his office and the governor have advised state agencies to spend their money wisely in preparation for potential cuts in the future.

“We’re hoping that people are listening and not spending money too quickly in recognition of the fact that, not only may we have a problem in the current fiscal year, we hope we don’t, but we will have to deal with this problem from ’16,” Dardenne said.