Introduction
The Governor’s Fiscal Year 2010 budget proposal, House 1 (H.1), continues the significant progress the Commonwealth has made in making it easier for everyone to see and understand the priorities within our state budget. The documents posted by the Governor on his website provide extensive detail on the development of the budget as well as details on the major fiscal policies incorporated into the budget document. The Governor also provides usable downloadable files with appropriation details and historical spending information, allowing any user to conduct analysis of the Commonwealth’s budget.
In future years the Governor should also release a maintenance budget to allow the public to understand how the Governor’s budget proposal reflects real cuts or expansions in programming. A maintenance budget, sometimes referred to as a “current services” budget or a “level services” budget, estimates the cost of continuing into the next year the current year’s level of service, while adjusting for inflation and caseload changes. Through the impressive amount of information included in the policy reports and narratives that accompany the budget and other ways, the Governor has started to make available information about Fiscal Year 2010 “maintenance” levels.
The Governor’s budget materials also do not include an easy-to-understand and comprehensive “Sources and Uses” statement describing his budget proposal. This document would, on one page, list all proposed state spending and all sources of revenue, allowing the reader to determine how the budget balances (i.e. whether there are sufficient revenues to pay for all of the expenses). “Sources and Uses” statements also are valuable tools for determining whether ongoing spending is supported by permanent, rather than temporary or one-time revenues.
Although the Governor’s budget proposal does not include a “Sources and Uses” document, the Governor’s budget documents do provide most of the information needed to construct such a chart. This Budget Brief takes the information provided by the Governor and compiles it in a “Sources and Uses” presentation, and shows how the Governor balances the budget. The data are current as of the publication of the Governor’s budget.
Sources and Uses
A “Sources and Uses” document (sometimes referred to as “Income and Expenses”) summarizes the various types of revenue or “sources” of funds available for the spending within the budget, and the various types of spending or “uses” to which these dollars will be put. The chart on the following page summarizes the Governor’s budget in a “Sources and Uses” format. A detailed explanation follows.
Chart 1.
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Staff
