Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen says there's no sugar coating it - More cuts are on the way. "Tennessee is joined by a lot of other states that are having significant budget issues right now. Basically the states that don't have an energy basis to their state. If you're pumping oil into your state , you in good shape," Bredesen said after touring the Rhea County Hospital Wednesday. The governor says no cuts are planned to services under TennCare - just slow downs in any planned expansions of the program. "Health care and access to health care in areas that don't have a lot of choices remains very important to me," Bredesen added. And that remains true of education as well. But the Bredesen administration told higher education officials to prepare for an additional $43.7 million in reduced state funds. This after already reduced spending and increased tuitions in the fall. "We've got some real challenges here. What I'm committed to do is say, look we're not going to dig ourselves a hole, we're going to learn how to run these expenditures down so we don't find ourselves having totally eaten up our rainy day funds or leaving the next Governor with a huge hole they can't fill." The governor does point out the rainy day fund is at 3 quarters of a billion dollars right now. He suspects some of that will have to be used before the end of the year due to falling revenue. "Even though we reduced our projections dramatically toward the end of the budget cycle toward the end of this budget year, the revenues in July were way under those reduced estimates. The revenues in August are even worse and September I would expect to be worse than that." Bredesen says if he wouldn't have resisted pressure to use the rainy day fund in the Spring, the state would be in an even tougher position now.
By comparison, Georgia Govenor Sonny Perdue reports tax collections for September were up. But he still ordered state agencies to cut their budgets to meet an estimated one point six billion dollar shortfall.
[1]
[2]