A quick look at some big budget numbers

Cutting $4.8 billion from a budget can be a little messy. While we’ll be having some more detailed analysis in the coming days, I thought I’d start with some overall numbers to give you a picture of how the Governor’s budget proposal impacts funding levels. Warning: this information may be for the truly budget geeky.

First, how does the Governor’s proposal for FY 2010-11 compare to what was forecast for FY 2010-11 back in November (often called the “base”).

• K-12 Education (excluding the $1.3 billion payment shift) – 1% increase from FY 2008-09
• Higher Education – 10% decrease
• Health & Human Services (this includes Health Care Access Fund spending) – 10% decrease
• Public Safety – 1% decrease
• Transportation – 2% decrease
• Environment, Energy and Natural Resources – 7% decrease
• Agriculture and Veterans Affairs – 2% increase
• Economic Development - 12% decrease
• State Government – 3% increase
• Property Tax Aids & Credits (this includes aids to local government, the Circuit Breaker and the Renters’ Credit) -15% decrease

Second, how does the Governor’s proposal for FY 2010-11 compare to the budget for FY 2008-09? In other words, how does spending for next two years compare to what we spent in the last two years? Note: these percentages reflect how budget areas are impacted by unallotment and the proposed budget cuts combined.

• K-12 Education (excluding the $1.3 billion payment shift) – 2% increase from FY 2008-09
• Higher Education – 9% decrease
• Health & Human Services (this includes Health Care Access Fund spending) – 9% increase
• Public Safety – 1% decrease
• Transportation – 16% decrease
• Environment, Energy and Natural Resources – 20% decrease
• Agriculture and Veterans Affairs – 3% decrease
• Economic Development - 38% decrease
• State Government – 9% decrease
• Property Tax Aids & Credits (this includes aids to local government, the Circuit Breaker and the Renters’ Credit) – 9% decrease

More analysis to come…

-Christina Wessel