Kansas officials updated the state’s revenue forecast earlier this month, and this week will be the first chance to see how the estimates stack up. As Stephen Koranda reports, state tax collections for November will be reported on Thursday.
Recently, Kansas has been pretty consistently coming up short of monthly revenue projections. Duane Goossen, who was the budget director in Kansas for 12 years ending in 2010, says since the revenue forecast was just updated, it’s likely the November report won’t be far off. He says the real test of the revenue forecast will be in the next couple months.
“That will cover the holiday seasons and holiday buying period, and it also puts a little more time between when the estimate was done and the revenue reports,” Goossen says.
Goossen says the state’s budget is structurally unbalanced right now and the coming months probably won’t have a significant impact on that. The state is facing a $350 million deficit for the current fiscal year.