Missouri Revenues Drop in FY 2010 July 2, 2010

Missouri Budget Director Linda Luebbering (Photo by: Marshall Griffin, St. Louis Public Radio.)

State revenues in Missouri dropped by more than 9 percent during the fiscal year that just ended, making it one of the worst in recent memory. St. Louis Public Radio’s Marshall Griffin reports.

Here’s the story.

When Fiscal Year 2010 ended on Wednesday, the state of Missouri had collected $6.75 billion in taxes, compared to nearly $7.5 billion the year before. The drop in revenue forced Gov. Jay Nixon to cut the budget several times during the course of the year. But Budget Director Linda Luebbering doesn’t expect that to happen again this year.

“The reductions that the governor made back in June should be about where we need to be to keep this budget balanced, so we’ll obviously monitor it regularly.”

The good news: Luebbering says collections of both sales and withholding taxes increased during the last three months. And corporate income and franchise taxes rose by nearly 14 percent last month. In Jefferson City, I’m Marshall Griffin, St. Louis Public Radio.

Web Extra! Hear more from Budget Director Linda Luebbering.

“That would have been challenging enough, but the previous fiscal year was a decline of 6.9 percent from the year before that, so we have had two years back-to-back negative revenue, which is just unheard of.”

Luebbering says FY 2012, which starts one year from now, could be even worse, because Missouri is set to lose nearly $900 million in federal stabilization funds. Revenue is expected to grow this year, albeit at very low levels. Luebbering says, though, it should be enough to avoid any more mid-year budget cuts. Sales and withholding taxes have also increased during the past three months.