States' budgets looking brighter

Jobs, jobs, jobs — and the taxes they bring — that's what will save states' budgets, a national legislative convention was told Tuesday.

And in connection with that develop-jobs mantra of business leaders and economists, the National Conference of State Legislatures released a new report Tuesday showing states' budgets are looking a lot better nowadays, coming back from the desperate revenue shortfalls of 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Unemployment in the United States stands today at 5.6 percent, the historic average of the past 50 years, David Wyss, chief economist for Standard & Poors, told the NCSL's opening main session in the Salt Palace.

And the latest downturn's unemployment peak, 6.2 percent last June, was lower than any other recession's peak in U.S. history, he added.

Yet generally speaking, Americans believe unemployment is too high. Why? Because of the record low unemployment and high job growth they became used to in the late 1990s before 9/11 and the stock market crash, he said.

"We're back to normal" in U.S. unemployment. "We just don't like normal anymore."

John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, a group of 150 CEOs of the nation's largest businesses, said the best thing state and federal governments can do to help create jobs is to educate and train more Americans in better ways.

Governments must also stop the wild growth in health-care costs and reform the broken civil court system, he said.

"Let business do what business does best" and then get out of the way, Castellani said.

Every year, the U.S. tort system — whether you believe it defends people adequately or not — costs the nation's economy $200 billion. "No other nation in the world" pays that heavy cost in civil litigation. And it's a cost that American business can't bear and continue to compete with industrialized nations, he said.

The theme of this year's convention, the first held in Utah by the nation's largest legislative group, is "The New Legislative Reality." That reality is getting better — at least in state checking accounts.

The new NCSL report shows fiscal year-end balances increased 50 percent this year to $18.4 billion in the 44 states in the survey. Six states, including California and other large states, have not yet adopted budgets for next year — in part because they still have large revenue gaps to fill, and in part because they are split politically and can't reach consensus budgets, said NCSL executive director William Pound.

Utah is one of the lucky ones.

Just last week, Utah Tax Commission economists said the state ended the fiscal year June 30 with a $106 million surplus in its two main accounts.