Senate Majority Leader: Annual Budget Deficit To Exceed $600 million

Or it could be a billion dollars. Either the Majority Leader or the Valley Breeze was unclear.
Whatever the case, Senate Majority Leader Daniel Connors imparted this news in a meeting Monday (last) with Cumberland officials. From Thursday’s Valley Breeze:

Income taxes keep falling thanks to unrelenting, record layoffs. All the while sales and restaurant taxes are plummeting as residents pinch their pennies, said Connors, a Democrat who represents some of Cumberland and Lincoln.
At the same time, Rhode Islanders are applying for more and more social services, including unemployment benefits.
“The state is spending $1 million more a day than it is taking in,” Connors told the town’s leaders. “We’re clearly in a crisis mode.”
The $357 million mentioned as the deficit number “is really just to close out the fiscal year (on June 30),” he said. From 2009 to 2010, “we’re well in excess of a billion-dollar problem and the situation continues to deteriorate. It’s pretty grim.”

So is the “billion-dollar problem” a combination of the shortfalls from the current year plus next year? Also, the headline of this story

Connors: Total 2008-’09 shortfall nears $1 billion

does not abate the confusion on this point.
Side note: I point out these little glitches in reporting not to complain, only to solicit clarity. We wouldn’t know about this at all if it weren’t for the Breeze; neither the Woonsocket Call nor the ProJo covered the Majority Leader’s remarks.

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Patrick
Patrick
15 years ago

Boy wonder ain’t the brightest bulb in the box. This is a guy who was given the Director of HR job in Cumberland so he could “learn on the job” while he was preparing to pass the bar exam. This is the same guy who worked in the law office of Joe Montalbano while a sitting State Senator. The list goes on and on about Danny Boy. Many of us are not proud to claim him as our Senator.
I took the story to mean it is a true $1B, not counting this year.

Mike
Mike
15 years ago

The encouraging thing about the article is all the specific and concrete plans he laid out to solve the problem.
LOL.
This state is screwed. Get ready for a 10% sales tax right after next years elections with bonds and smoke and mirrors accounting plugging the gaps until then.
You know what-the voters deserve EVERY BIT of it.
Buy online, buy cross-border
ScrewRI-and the crooks who run it.

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