Column -- Snow Job

Gov. Chet Culver was at the wheel when the state's budget hit a red-ink blizzard and slid off the road and into a billion-dollar ditch. So who is to blame? The forecasters.

Culver says a three-member panel of experts that tries to forecast state tax collections isn't looking at enough economic “indicators” to get its predictions right. He's also unhappy that state lawmakers, who are required to use a tax estimate crafted in December to build the state's budget, are instead waiting for a potentially rosier estimate in March.

Before we get too far into the fiscal weeds, the bottom line is that Culver is suggesting the mechanics of estimating and budgeting are the real problem here. If only the forecasts were better, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Gov. Tom Vilsack also tried tinkering with the revenue estimating process when the budget busted under his watch. So there's precedent for tinkering.

But I'd be more sympathetic to Gov. Culver's argument if I hadn't watched him spend months insisting that everything was fine and dandy while gloomy, dire economic indicators piled up all around him. It's tough to hear a call for more indicators from a chief executive who tried to convince us endlessly that a triple A bond rating was the only indicator that mattered.

In the fall of 2008, while the economy was commencing its spinning butt-fall, Culver insisted to our editorial board that the downturn wouldn't affect Iowa. A chorus of smart people warned otherwise while he and Democrats crafted a $6 billion state budget balanced with smoke and mirrors and lots of one-time federal stimulus money. No worries, was the reply.

And now we face a $1 billion budget shortfall. This is not simply the margin of error in a faulty revenue forecast. If that's what Culver is selling, we're not buying.

For one thing, state budgets are not really guided by cold, hard finances and forecasts.

They are political documents shaped more by promises, paybacks, deals, aspirations, favors and horse trades than clear-eyed fiscal calculations. Even a perfect revenue forecast can't force politicians to have good judgment or resist temptation or stop them from passing big spending bills lit up like a Christmas trees with pricey baubles in the dark of night.

A spreadsheet also can't give leaders the courage to seek adequate revenues to pay for their priorities. If they had the guts, we wouldn't have to rely on tea leaves.

No matter how much data you throw in, forecasting tax revenues is like predicting snowfall.

You use data and computer models and experience and instincts. Sometimes you predict a foot and get an inch. Sometimes you predict a dusting and get a blizzard.

And sometimes, we get a gubernatorial snow job.

Grab a shovel.

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