By GARRY RAYNO, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD — Several members of the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee want to prevent the state from running a deficit two years in a row.
Friday, Senate Finance Committee Chair and fiscal committee member James Gray, R-Rochester, suggested the committee receive quarterly reports from the Legislative Budget Assistant’s Office on where the state’s finances stand to help prevent another deficit.
The state ended the 2025 fiscal year in a deficit that required the withdrawal of about $90 million from the state’s rainy day fund to cover, according to estimates at the end of the fiscal year.
The actual figure will be determined after the official comprehensive financial audit of the state’s books is completed. The report is usually released in December or January.
At Friday’s meeting Gray told his colleagues they need to look at the state’s financial situation in a timely fashion and not be lax and rely on commissioners to tell them everything is OK and then tell them it is not.
“We have no idea if the commissioners are giving us the right numbers or not,” Gray said, noting they do not want to have the same problems they had with last fiscal year’s budget noting revenues are already in deficit.
“Shame on us for last year,” Gray said.
For the first two months of the new 2026 fiscal year, the state’s general and education trust funds are $10.2 million below what budget writers estimated would be needed for a balanced budget at the end of the biennium.
If that two-month deficit is projected over the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year, the revenue deficit would be over $100 million.
The projected revenue deficit for the 2025 fiscal year is about $42.3 million below the revenue plan, and almost $200 million less than the state took in the fiscal year before.
Senate President and fiscal committee member Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, said she supports Gray and what he proposes and would like to see financial reports so budget writers could be proactive and the problem does not become insurmountable.
That way they can take action early on and control the state’s finances so there isn’t a deficit, she said.
Fiscal committee chair, Rep. Kenneth Weyler, R-Kingston, said if the conference committee on the budget had adopted the House Ways and Means revenue estimates, they would not be facing the problems they do now with the revenue shortfall.
The House’s revenue estimates for its proposed budget was about $300 million less than the estimates adopted in the final budget plan.
Business taxes, which are the single largest source of state revenue, account for $9.5 million of the $10.2 million revenue deficit for the first two months of the fiscal year.
Business taxes, which fueled the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue surplus in the years following the initial COVID pandemic impact, have been trending down for the past two fiscal years to more normal ranges.
Multinational corporations’ profits soared during that period due to the influx of billions of dollars in federal relief and rescue money that spurred the country’s economy.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.
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