Lawmakers to get tax-surplus data

State lawmakers will order at least quarterly tax revenue surplus or deficit reports, legislative leaders decided Tuesday.

The change will give lawmakers current-year tax and budget spending comparisons to make up for the old monthly estimates, which stopped a year ago after the chief economist for the Utah Tax Commission retired.

Since that economist, Doug Macdonald, left the commission in the spring of 2006, tax commissioners announced they would no longer try to estimate real-time budget surpluses or deficits as part of their monthly TC23 tax revenue report, leaving lawmakers and the public wondering just how large of a tax surplus the state was running.

"Especially toward the end (of the state's fiscal year June 30) I found those estimates helpful," said House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake.

But there was little doubt that some legislators found the monthly budget surplus estimates — regularly reported in some news media outlets — politically disquieting.

For example, during some of the majority GOP legislators' re-election bids in 2006, incumbents' fiscal conservatism was questioned for allowing the state to run tax surpluses of hundreds of millions of dollars.

When the Tax Commission refused to include budget surplus numbers in its reports, those numbers became unavailable for public debate during the spring and summer campaign seasons.

The Legislative Executive Appropriations Committee, made up of House and Senate leaders from both parties, voted Tuesday afternoon to require the current Budget Assumption Committee to meet in May and September each year to come up with budget surplus numbers.

Currently, that committee — made up of economists from the executive and legislative branches, private industry and university business professors — meets in late November to come up with tax surplus projections for Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s proposed budget (released in mid-December) and in early February to provide legislators with updated revenue/surplus numbers before lawmakers open the current year's budget to spend more money and set the final budget for the upcoming fiscal year.

Requiring May and September tax surplus updates provides state leaders and the public with two more "glimpses" of state tax collections/budget surpluses, leaders said.