Jackson Free Press

The good news for state-budget worrywarts is that Mississippi could have additional spending money for its woefully underfunded state agencies. The bad news for those state agencies is that state leaders seem reluctant to spend the extra cash.

In a scantly publicized meeting of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee Thursday, the 14-member bipartisan panel voted to raise the revenue forecast by about $97 million for the coming fiscal year, which commences July 1. Forecasters also said that another $60 million could be added to the current 2013 fiscal year budget, which would help offset deficits facing a number of state agencies.

But with Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves leading the charge, the committee voted against raising the estimate for FY 2013.

"No matter what the revenue estimate is, it's always going to be wrong. It's impossible to get it exactly right," Reeves told reporters in his Capitol office Thursday afternoon.

Reeves, the former state treasurer, said the fact that the bulk of state revenue collections occur in the last quarter of the fiscal year combined with Mississippi's slow rate of growth leads him to the conclusion that the additional $60 million will not actually materialize.

But Democrats and Reeves' Republican counterpart on the other end of the Capitol, House Speaker Philip Gunn, of Clinton, see things differently.

Former House Appropriations Chairman Rep. Johnny Stringer, D-Montrose, said not accepting the $60 million increase for current budget year was a mistake considering that so many agencies are dealing with budget gaps. Among those, Stringer said are $44 million for the Olivia Y settlement against the Department of Human Services, $33 million for the Department of Corrections and $3 million for the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

"We've got real problems," Stringer said during a noon Democratic budget hearing March 21.

The House and Senate have each passed early versions of budget bills for the coming year, and at this point the Senate has proposed spending slightly more than the House. The two chambers have sent more than 100 budget bills to conference committees for final negotiations. Lawmakers face an early April deadline to deliver a budget to Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.

Speaker Gunn said budget writers are still trying to reduce the use of "one-time money." For the past several years, lawmakers have dipped into money that is only available a single year at a time--things like lawsuit settlements--to pay for recurring state expenses, such as workers' salaries.

"The good news to me is the economy appears to at least have stabilized," Gunn said Thursday. "I don't know how quickly it's improving, but it is at least not getting any worse, and it appears that revenues are increasing."

State agencies have requested millions more dollars than the state has available to spend, even with the increase. Still, Gunn said the higher estimate would make it easier for lawmakers to distribute money among state agencies.

"More money is good," Gunn told reporters.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.