I’m still all juiced up from the weekend craziness. You guys were chatty this weekend!
In other news, our governor features prominently in a Wall Street Journal article about how governors are dealing with the financial crisis.
When Mr. Markell, a Democrat, took office 10 months ago, he inherited an $800 million budget shortfall. He has cut state employees’ salaries, grounded the state airplane and closed the Museum of Small Town Life, among other measures. Now, he is traversing his tiny state to tell constituents that his budget problems are theirs, too, and that the problems aren’t going away soon. It’s a tough message for governors to deliver after decades of expanding state services. But the recession is giving them little choice and forcing them to try to change voters’ expectations about what government can provide.
[…]
But states don’t have Washington’s ability to borrow cheaply, and their spending appetites have been growing faster than their taxing ability. Between 1987 and 2009 in Connecticut, for example, general expenditures rose by 283%, while taxing capacity — potential sources of income for the state — increased by 172%, according to an analysis by Donald Klepper-Smith, who chairs the governor’s economic-advisory council.
The recession will force big changes, not all of which have materialized. “We have yet to see the public sector adapt in the way the private sector has,” said Mr. Klepper-Smith, also the chief economist and director of research for DataCore Partners LLC. “We can’t tax our way out of this problem. Many in local government have yet to appreciate the structural nature of this recession. The cuts have been superficial.”