State revenues were off in May by just over $14 million, reducing the state’s revenue surplus to less than $19 million for the budget year that ends June 30.
Finance Commissioner Richard Rosen says the drop was a timing issue for income tax withholding payments and the taxes paid by insurance companies, and that by the end of this month that $14 million should be totally made up.
Rosen says it’s pretty clear that when the revenues are counted July 1, there will be a surplus. “We had a conservative forecast, running about $19 million dollars ahead of that, now 11 months into the fiscal year," he says. "And the expectation is we will close out the year with a surplus.”
The final size of the surplus will take weeks to compute with unspent balances in various areas of state spending adding to the revenues that were in excess of estimates.