Another year of state budget brinksmanship?
Grappling with declining state revenues makes for some very unpleasant budget choices, as Governor Ritter and the Democrat majorities in the state legislature learned over the past 12 months.
It’s fair to criticize those choices, including the governor last year denying for several months that a problem existed. Yet anyone who has shouldered the responsibility of balancing a budget during a recession understands that learning from your own mistakes is inevitable.
Learning, however, is essential — both to sound fiscal policy and to political credibility. That’s why it was astonishing to hear Governor Ritter and leading Democrats dismiss the need for a special session of the legislature on the very day they acknowledged that the state will start the new fiscal year nearly $400 million in the hole. (more…)