Feb 06, 2007 - 10:15:07 CST
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — North Dakota legislators, who are already debating how to handle a fat budget surplus, have learned they have another $7.4 million to spend.Newly updated forecasts of the state's tax collections show North Dakota's treasury expects to collect another $6.1 million before its current two-year budget period ends June 30, said Pam Sharp, North Dakota's budget director.
The estimates also tacked another $1.3 million in expected collections onto the state's revenue figures for the next two-year budget cycle, which begins July 1 and ends June 30, 2009.
``I think this is good news. We don't have a significant amount of change in this forecast,'' Sharp said Tuesday at a meeting of the state House and Senate's appropriations committees.
Every session, the budget office gives North Dakota lawmakers an estimate of what the state expects to collect in taxes for the next two years. It tells legislators how much money they have to spend.
This year, the Legislature already has a lot of money to work with. North Dakota's budget surplus was previously estimated at about $538 million in the current budget period.
Tuesday's new estimates raise the surplus number to about $544 million, and increased the general fund revenues the state expects to collect in the next two years from $2.291 billion to $2.292 billion.
The previous forecast was done in November, to give Gov. John Hoeven an estimate of tax collections to use in writing his budget recommendations to the Legislature. The new set of numbers were compiled in January.
2007 N.D. Legislature wrote on Feb 6, 2007 2:20 PM:
Crank wrote on Feb 6, 2007 1:27 PM:
SE Forty wrote on Feb 6, 2007 1:15 PM:
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