Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar delivered bleak but
unsurprising news earlier last week: because of the economic fallout triggered
by the coronavirus pandemic, the amount of general revenue available for
the state’s current two-year budget is projected to be roughly $11.5 billion less
than originally estimated. That puts the state on track to end the biennium,
which runs through August 2021, with a deficit of nearly $4.6
billion. Those figures are a significant downward revision from
Hegar’s last revenue estimate in October 2019, when
the comptroller said the state would have over $121 billion to spend on
its current budget and end the biennium with a surplus of nearly
$2.9 billion. The state will now have roughly $110 billion to work with
for the current budget. Hegar’s latest estimate, he stressed in a letter to
Gov. Greg Abbott and other state leaders, carries “an unprecedented amount
of uncertainty” and could change drastically in the coming months, thanks
to the pandemic and, to a lesser extent, a recent drop in oil prices.
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