The economic prognosticators' report said the Utah economy and state revenues won't recover this next fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2010.

That's bad news.

Lawmakers had hoped — now apparently in vain — that state tax revenues could rebound quickly, avoiding what could be a fiscal train wreck for fiscal 2011.

Still, Utah is far better off than many other states. California, for example, is facing bankruptcy. And some governments can't sell their bonds, while Utah has a AAA bond rating and recently sold some bonds at 1.7 percent, a very fine rate.

House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, a banker, said that for all the hundreds of millions of dollars that the federal stimulus poured into Utah, state government itself is doing a better job of stimulating the local economy.

The feds gave Utah more than $200 million for road construction, but the state's reconstruction of I-15 in Utah County costs $2.2 billion. Unfortunately, most of that state money won't be flowing into the local construction economy for months, if not a year, he added.

Andrea Wilko, chief economist for the Legislature, ticked off economic indicator after indicator, all down and some still dropping in Utah.

The state won't likely see job growth come back into a positive range until mid-2010, if then, she said.

In fact, while state government has cut back its work force, federal government employment in Utah and some local-government employment are actually growing.

The only other area of job growth is health care; all other sectors are losing jobs, Wilko said.

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