You see, over the years I've seen great discomfort among some legislators over Macdonald's estimates showing huge tax surpluses — which leads to political pressure to both spend more on state programs and give tax cuts.

And, of course, we wouldn't want the public to actually KNOW if their tax dollars are coming in way over or way under budget. Knowledge, after all, can be a dangerous thing in the hands of amateurs.

So, getting the fourth-month TC23 report of actual tax collections (no surplus estimates), I asked Macdonald in November if he could rerun some of his economic models to see what kind of surpluses the state was running in 2006-07, which ends June 30.

He said it looked to him like we were running a $150 million surplus over the first four months of this fiscal year. For the whole year, then, the state could have a $450 million surplus — a record.

And guess what? When Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. released his 2007-08 budget recommendation two weeks later, he (as governors always do) included a surplus update for this current year.

And the governor's group of esteemed economists predicted a $498.2 million surplus this year.

Pretty good work by Macdonald, I say — and he didn't have all of the figures and information that Huntsman's economic team had.

Now GOP leaders in both the House and Senate say they will try — without the Tax Commission — to issue quarterly budget surplus/deficit projections. The details are still being worked out.

I say good riddance to the cowardly tax commissioners in this matter, who apparently didn't want to ruffle legislators' budget surplus feathers.

Let's hope that the Legislature can come up with unbiased figures. Otherwise, I'll be bugging Macdonald to give me estimates for years to come.

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Deseret Morning News political editor Bob Bernick Jr. may be reached by e-mail at bbjr@desnews.com