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MassBudget Brief: Transparency and Balance, FY 2009 General Appropriation Act
Table of Contents
- Introduction and Chart
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Table of Contents
- Introduction and Chart
The Commonwealth’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget is notable for the extent to which there has been enough information made publicly available for everyone to see and understand the priorities within the budget, and to see how it is balanced.1
Starting with the Governor’s original budget proposal in January, and continuing through the proposals made by the House and Senate and then the Conference Committee, there has been significant progress in the "transparency"? of information, implementing many of the recommendations made in Creating a Transparent Budget for Massachusetts,2 a report by the Massachusetts Budget Transparency Project.
This MassBudget Brief takes the information provided by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance and creates a complete "Sources and Uses" statement for the Fiscal Year 2009 General Appropriation Act. Because the “Sources and Uses” lists all proposed state spending and all sources of revenue, the reader can determine whether the budget balances (i.e. whether there are sufficient revenues to pay for all of the expenses), and whether the budget is in structural balance – whether ongoing spending is supported by permanent, rather than temporary or one-time revenues.
Although neither the Governor nor either the Legislature included a Sources and Uses statement within their budget documents made available to the public, for the first time they both provided most of the information needed to construct such a statement.
The following chart summarizes the budget. A detailed explanation of each line follows.
Click here to view this chart full size in a new window.
Starting with the Governor’s original budget proposal in January, and continuing through the proposals made by the House and Senate and then the Conference Committee, there has been significant progress in the "transparency"? of information, implementing many of the recommendations made in Creating a Transparent Budget for Massachusetts,2 a report by the Massachusetts Budget Transparency Project.
This MassBudget Brief takes the information provided by the Executive Office of Administration and Finance and creates a complete "Sources and Uses" statement for the Fiscal Year 2009 General Appropriation Act. Because the “Sources and Uses” lists all proposed state spending and all sources of revenue, the reader can determine whether the budget balances (i.e. whether there are sufficient revenues to pay for all of the expenses), and whether the budget is in structural balance – whether ongoing spending is supported by permanent, rather than temporary or one-time revenues.
Although neither the Governor nor either the Legislature included a Sources and Uses statement within their budget documents made available to the public, for the first time they both provided most of the information needed to construct such a statement.
The following chart summarizes the budget. A detailed explanation of each line follows.
Click here to view this chart full size in a new window.
1 For the final budget, see www.mass.gov/gaa.
2 Published jointly by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MBPC), the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, October 2006, and available at
massbudget.org/Creating_a_Transparent_Budget.pdf.
For a discussion of progress on these recommendations, see also A More Transparent Budget: Continuing the Progress from MBPC and the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies at the University of Massachusetts, available at http://massbudget.org/MoreTransparentBudget.pdf.
Table of Contents
- Introduction and Chart
