Title

Tongue-in-cheek piece by Al Diamon about the unsuccessful attempts of state offi

Authors

Al Diamon

Source

Portland Phoenix

Date

7-5-2002

Pages

6

Abstract

Tongue-in-cheek piece by Al Diamon about the unsuccessful attempts of state officials to correctly estimate state revenues, and how they squander their credibility by overestimating them. Two examples cited for this are former governor John McKernan who relied on the overly rosey forecasts of his economic advisor, Richard Silkman, and faced enormous budgetary shortfalls when the recession of the early 1990s hit, and Gov. Angus King, who has accepted the revenue projection of his forecasters, with the result that his successor now faces a two-year revenue shortfall of as much as $600 million. Diamon's hero is Gov. Joseph Brennan, who always lied about revenue projections to the public. Brennan dicounted his advisor's revenue projections in public. In that way, he had budget surpluses when revenues met projections and budgets that were less unbalanced than would have otherwise been the case when revenues fell short of projections.

Subjects

Revenue

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