
	Chris Mulick has worked for the Herald since 1998 and has served as the statehouse correspondent covering state government and politics since 2000. He works year-round out of the Herald's Olympia bureau on the state Capitol campus. Have a question? Send Chris an e-mail and he'll answer the best questions regularly.

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Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008

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Budget hole gets deeper, but by how much?

Projected tax collections are down $529 million, which will serve to only widen the state’s budget gap.

I’m on a conference call and couldn’t make it to today’s meeting of the Revenue Forecast Council. But the Seattle Times’ Andrew Garber was there to report the news.

I haven’t seen anything posted on the council’s website yet. A statement by the state’s Office of Financial Management, in which Gov. Chris Gregoire call for the agency to find $200 million in savings posthaste, does not include a revised deficit number.

But expect Republicans to ask the Senate Ways and Means Committee for a revised outlook, which you’ll then hear about.

UPDATE: Elsewhere on the web you'll find reports that merely lop this $529 million revenue reduction on top of the $2.7 billion deficit projection that is now three months old to get a new deficit projection of $3.2 billion. But that doesn't account for changes in demand for state services and other factors, including new state worker contracts, that would (could? should?) be built into the baseline assumptions that would be used to construct such an estimate. The actual number could be higher. Again, we'll look for a revised estimate from the Ways and Means Committee staff.

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