Gov. Bob McDonnell submitted $43.9 million in amendments about two hours before his midnight Friday deadline. He made 88 changes in all, some of them highly technical, some of them directing more funds to education, economic development and scientific research.

Efforts to move the state's budget along in the legislative process got delayed for a few hours Tuesday by the small renegade group of state Senators who have objected to the Senate's budget process.

Senate GOP Leader Jerry Behn of Boone describes the split-control Legislature's difficulty in shutting down its session for a second straight year as "limping" to the finish.

Gov. John Kasich, who came into office vowing to curb the influence of special interests on the state budget, blasted House Republicans Wednesday for passing a version of his mid-budget review that includes $30 million in new funding for nursing homes.

Legislative leaders call for special session to resolve financial issues.

This paper examines the fiscal health of the 50 U.S. states. As this paper shows, accounting for implicit pension liabilities provides a significantly more negative picture than does explicit debt information on its own.

The comparison of biennial and annual budgets recently made headlines thanks to Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, who vetoed a spending bill that only appropriated funds for one year and instead is insisting on bills that plan for two years of spending. Brandstad is adamant that a biennial budget is critical to creating responsibility, but are biennial budgets really so much better?

The trend among state governments for the past 70 years has been to abandon biennial budgeting for annual budgeting. Forty-four states practiced biennial budgeting in 1940. Twenty will do so in 2010, when Arkansas turns from biennial to annual budgeting (Arkansas is reported as an annual-budgeting state in this report in anticipation of the change). There are several reasons for the shift to annual budgeting, but in general the shift has been part of the resurgence of state legislative power since the middle of the century.

Highway spending in New Hampshire is not funded by general taxation. Our highway spending is supported entirely by user fees like the gas tax and turnpike tolls. So, if we're developing a real plan, let's start by figuring out how much money those fees will raise over the next ten years.

This is the year to resolve Pennsylvania's serious financial crises by changing the budget focus from inputs to outcomes. In other words, legislators and the governor should junk the old conventional model and start designing a reality-based budget from the ground up based on priorities and performance.

The adoption of a priority based, or outcome-based budgeting system would help Virginia policymakers more easily identify the governmental activities most important to taxpayers and help make difficult trade-off and cost-benefit decisions.

The South Carolina state budget should be more transparent. There should be one document showing the exact amount lawmakers appropriated in a given year and the budget should reveal where all money is coming from.  The budget should list every program each agency is running, how much that program is receiving, and a description of the program.

This study proposes a budget stabilization plan for Kansas, which is a rules-based approach to state budgeting. A tax-and-expenditure rule is linked to rules for the disposition of surplus revenue. Under a rules-based approach to budgeting, surplus revenue is used to meet emergencies, stabilize the budget over the business cycle and/or earmarked to fund one-time capital projects. Once those needs are met, remaining surplus revenue is returned to taxpayers in rebates or used to reduce tax rates.