October 12, 2015 11:02 AM

Greenfield: State Expenditures, What Transpired in Fiscal Year 2015

Our resident number cruncher Dr. Stuart Greenfield says the next Legislature may be forced to spend as much as half the budget on Health and Human Services – and he argues creative thinking will be required to fund other state services as well.

As Comptroller Glenn Hegar recently announced, "State revenues for fiscal 2015 came in very close to the amounts we projected in January before the legislative session."

In fact, the FY15 projection was within $110.6 million of actual tax collections ($51.7 billion) and $291.9 million for total revenue ($109.4 billion). While the estimates exceeded actual collections, the state’s ending General Revenue balance, $5.6 billion, was a $500 million increase from FY14. The total General Revenue Consolidated was $11.1 billion, an increase of $100 million from FY14.

While the increase (4.3 percent) in total revenue was less than expected, total expenditures increased by $6.7 billion (6.7 percent) to $106.4 billion. For the FY14-15 biennium, total revenue was $214.4 billion, while total expenditures were $206.0 billion.

The complete column from Dr. Stuart Greenfield is in the R&D Department.

By Dr. Stuart Greenfield