By PAULA TRACY, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – The next two-year state budget now moves to the State Senate.
State Sen. Tim Lang, R-Sanbornton, who is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the process will begin before that when the Senate Ways and Means Committee gets revenue estimates starting on April 23.
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“The Senate Ways and Means has an advantage over the House Ways and Means because we have 3-4 more months of revenue/tax data to work with, as well as the fact Business state tax returns which will have already been submitted to (the Department of Revenue Administration) by 4/15 (or an tax estimate and payment is submitted with an extension request), so we will have the benefit of access to that cumulative data,” he said Friday in an email response to InDepthNH.org asking about the process going forward to craft a new, two-year state budget.
“While the Finance committee begins (to) look at the spending side, sometime before May 14th the Senate Ways and Means committee will let the Finance Committee know the estimated state revenues (money in) for spending (money out). Finance CMTE will then work from those numbers to make sure we have a balanced budget,” Lang said.
The process began with the Gov. Kelly Ayotte putting forward her budget message on Feb. 14 and it looked at revenues which were higher than those which the House Ways and Means put forward to the House Finance Committee. It resulted in a $15.4 billion proposal which was balanced compared to the governor’s roughly $6 billion budget.
Since that time revenues have been improving, through March and were almost $10 million above the plan but showed business taxes were 9.6 percent below the projected number. April, the governor said, is perhaps the most important month to look at revenues as that is about when taxes are coming in.
She said she was hopeful that the Senate will have better numbers which will allow them to produce a budget which is closer to her numbers and priorities, and she said this Wednesday she planned to be working closely with the Senate.
While this is her first budget go-around, she is familiar with the process at the federal level as a former U.S. Senator and she said she is aware that the fiscal picture here is not what it was two years ago.
Lang said, “While it will be a difficult revenue year(s), that is only because we are looking at it with respect to the last half dozen years when we had tremendous economic growth in the state, and had large budget surpluses at the end of each biennial. Those surpluses allowed the legislators the luxury to fund various one-time spending projects, and things not directly funded in the budget. I suspect those budget surpluses this year will be lower, and the economic growth will be slower (but still growing), thus less growth money for the next two years than we have been used to. So prioritization of spending will be the toughest part in Finance,” he said.
Other members of the Senate Finance Committee include Republican Senators James Gray, its chair, Dan Innis, its vice chair, Senate President Sharon Carson, Regina Birdsell, and Howard Pearl. Senate Democrats Cindy Rosenwald and David Watters are also members of the committee which will recommend a Senate Budget to the full 24-member body.
“Lastly we know that the inflation and high interest rates are the factors that affect both businesses and consumers and are why we are really seeing the slowing of economic growth. I am looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work on the revenue projections and the budget. Granite Staters are counting on a good fiscally responsible budget that serves all NH citizens, and I know the NH Senate won’t let them down,” Lang said.