Bottom Line: A Look at the Final Budget
June 2013
Josh Elliott-Traficante
The Fiscal Year 2014-15 Budget passed both the House and Senate by wide margins on June 26th, and is currently awaiting Governor Hassan’s signature, who has said that she will sign it. So how does this year’s final budget look like over all? In General Funds, it spends roughly $213.9 million more than in the previous biennium.
Revenues:
The State Senate avowedly against including any new fees or taxes in the budget and their position won out over the House proposal to increase a number of fees and delay several tax changes. The only tax that will increase is the tobacco tax. When it passed as part of the last budget, it included a sunset provision, meaning that the cut will be rolled back to the original rate. The remaining (and vast majority of the) increase in projected revenues over the last budget is entirely due to economic growth.
Expenditures: Biennium to Biennium:
Over the biennium, the FY14-15 budget spends roughly $213.9 million more in General Funds than the FY12-13 budget did. That represents a biennial increase of 8.41%, with 8.0% in the first year, followed by 2.2% increase the following year
Board and Care Revenue as well as Plea by Mail have been returned to the General Fund numbers for FY14-15 to make an Apples to Apples comparison possible. Data is from the Committee of Conference Surplus Statement and is net of lapses and back of the budget cuts.
While the majority of that increase was paid for by increased revenue from existing taxes at existing rates, nearly $57 million[i] of it is from the surplus generated by the FY 12-13 budget.
The Biggest Winner: Higher Education
Seeing some of the biggest increases in funding were the Community College and University Systems, which saw an additional $100 million in General Fund money combined over the biennium.