By Jim Dooley | Hawaii Reporter
HONOLULU – The effects of newly downgraded tax revenue projections will be “minimal” for the current state budget but will be “quite considerable and severe” in future years, causing Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration to at least consider the possibility of future tax increases, Budget Director Kalbert Young said today.
Young’s comments [...]

By Jim Dooley | Hawaii Reporter
HONOLULU – State departments want to expand the budget by  some $334.7 million, Budget and Finance Director Kalbert Young said in the first of a series of money briefings to lawmakers planned for this week and next.
Young said new general fund requests from Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration total nearly $120 [...]

By ANNE KNOWLES
A new report on the financial outlook for the nation’s states says Montana could reach a debt-driven “tipping point” in 2038.
The Fiscal Health of the U.S. States, a report by Jeffrey Miron with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, says a more sober assessment of states’ pension funds liabilities as well as projected growth [...]

By WAYNE LUSVARDI
Most knowledgeable people realize that California’s debt emperor has no clothes. Even if the mainstream newspaper media continue to clothe the emperor in the robes of an all-wise Buddhist monk who has taken a vow of poverty.
The good news is that California is “drying out” from its addiction to Federal Stimulus monies, which [...]