Culver confident state can end budget year in the black

DES MOINES - With less than two weeks to go in the 2009 fiscal year, Gov. Chet Culver predicted the state would end the year with a balanced budget, despite warnings that revenues might fall short.

"There's no need for alarm," Culver told reporters Thursday afternoon. "You know unfortunately, sometimes opportunities like this are taken in more of a political context."

Legislative Services Agency analyst Jeff Robinson predicted earlier this week that the state might not have enough cash on hand to pay all its bills to close out the fiscal year.

Robinson predicted the state would spend all of the anticipated $45 million ending balance at the end of the fiscal year.

Culver has the authority to transfer another $50 million from the state's reserves to balance the budget, but Robinson said that still might not be enough.

Culver expressed confidence that the ending balance and his transfer authority would be enough to balance the budget and declined to speculate what he would do if it wasn't.

"I'm very confident that we'll be able to close the books on fiscal year '09 and move forward, and at this point it's too early to know exactly what we're going to have to do," Culver said.

He was set to meet with state department directors Thursday afternoon, where he said the budget would be one of the issues discussed.

Culver stressed that the fiscal year doesn't end until June 30 and said an ongoing daily analysis of the state budget situation "is not necessarily very helpful."

"I'm a little disappointed that people are commenting in the middle of a month. I mean, that's not typical," Culver said.

Culver said delaying state aid to Iowa schools is not an option they're looking at to balance the budget.

"It's not a consideration at this point," Culver said.

Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, had a less rosy view of the state's budget picture. He said

Culver and Democratic lawmakers "pulled out the credit cards" this past legislative session to spend more.

"I think this is consistent with what has happened over the past several months: refusal to accept the reality that we are in the midst of a recession - a rather entrenched recession," McKinley said.

Culver has options to forestall spending and push it into the next year or hold off paying vendors, McKinley said.

Iowa is not alone in facing budget woes.

A report released this week by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government found that personal income tax revenues to states plunged at the beginning of the year.

That report found that personal income tax collections dropped by 26 percent from January to April compared to the same period in the previous year.