Bill Walker

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The Week in Public Finance: Unbalanced Budgets, Alaska's Tax Battle and Creditor Complaints

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A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
BY  | JULY 15, 2016

Unbalanced Budgets

Fiscal 2017 isn't starting off so well for some states.

In Mississippi, officials announced they need to withdraw up to $63 million from the rainy day fund to cover declining revenues that left it with an $85 million budget shortfall. The announcement came just two days after the legislature removed the state’s restriction on how much it can withdraw from the fund in any given year. It reduces the state’s savings to just 1.4 percent of its general fund budget. Both moves drew criticism from Moody’s Investors Services.

Pennsylvania this week was placed on a credit watch by Standard & Poor’s rating agency for passing a budget that failed to offer a spending plan for more than $1 billion of it. Lawmakers eventually agreed on a revenue plan, but it still requires borrowing more than $200 million from a separate state fund.

Moody’s also criticized Kansas this week for yet another shortfall. We recently mentioned that Kansas is one of four states in a recession, according to federal economic data. Its total tax revenue was more than 7 percent short of what it expected for fiscal 2016. The state has struggled to meet its revenue expectations ever since lawmakers approved income tax cuts in 2012 and 2013.

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The Week in Public Finance: Punishment for Illinois, Budget Battles and New Jersey's Win

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A roundup of money (and other) news governments can use.
BY  | JUNE 10, 2016

A Battle Over Illinois’ Downgrade

Illinois was downgraded this week to two steps above junk status by Moody’s Investors Service. The downgrade is largely due to the state’s inability to pass a budget for the past year and a half. A political stalemate has crippled lawmaking in the state and Illinois -- already the lowest-rated state -- is being docked now with a Baa2 rating. The state’s current budget gap has only worsened over the past year. The structural budget deficit, including what Illinois is supposed be spending on pensions but isn’t, amounts to 15 percent of total general fund expenditures, Moody’s said. A day after the Moody's downgrade, Standard & Poor's also downgraded Illinois.

Apparently unperturbed by the fact that its overwhelming debt is what got it into this pickle, Illinois plans to borrow a half-billion in bonds later this month. The downgrade will likely increase the interest rate Illinois will have to pay on those bonds and impact the state’s outstanding $26 billion in debt.

Not long after the downgrade, the world’s largest money manager said investors should boycott Illinois’ upcoming sale.

“We as municipal market pa

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Q&A With Gov. Bill Walker on Fixing Alaska’s Finances

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The former businessman talks about betting his political career on fixing the Last Frontier’s finances.
BY  | MARCH 10, 2016

Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond and others knew all the way back in the ‘70s the dangers of relying financially on a finite resource. So when oil money began flowing into state coffers, Hammond and the legislature created in 1976 the Permanent Fund, which gets a share of the state’s oil revenues every year. The fund was seen as a source of income for when the oil ran out. Lawmakers can’t touch the initial investments -- just the earnings, which get divvied up and distributed annually to every resident who receives about $2,000.

“You have to remove the money,” Hammond said in 1980. “Put it behind a rope where you cannot utilize it for flamboyant expenditures.

Today Alaska still relies on oil revenues to fund most of its day-to-day operations, but nearly two years ago, oil prices began steadily declining. Since then, the state has withdrawn more than $6 billion from its substantial reserves and cut $1 billion in spending to close budget gaps. Last week, Moody’s Investors Service became the second ratings agency this year to strip Alaska of its AAA rating.