Missouri Faces Budget Shortages As Growth & Revenues Underperform

Missouri will be faced with difficult budget decisions going forward as growth and revenues have failed to meet the expectations set out in the state’s $27 spending blueprint

November 3, 2016

Missouri will be faced with difficult budget decisions going forward as growth and revenues have failed to meet the expectations set out in the state’s $27 spending blueprint.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch detailed the “lackluster revenue” and slowed growth in Missouri:

In a review of October’s tax collections released this week, Gov. Jay Nixon’s budget office reported that revenue increased 3.4 percent in the first four months of the fiscal year compared to the same period last year.

That’s a slower rate of growth that what lawmakers and Nixon had hoped for when crafting the state’s $27 billion spending blueprint. Under that plan, they had projected a growth rate of just under 5.5 percent to ensure the budget would be balanced.

 Sales and use tax collections slowed in October, increasing 2.2 percent for the fiscal year.

 Corporate income taxes continued their downward spiral, dropping 24.3 percent for the year.

Missouri underperformed its expected revenue increase of 5.5 percent and instead only increased at 3.4 percent, creating a budget deficit for next year. With unemployment increasing and revenues failing to meet expectations, elected leaders in Jefferson City need to focus turning around those jobs numbers and also growing the economy which is the best way to boost revenues.