Joint Finance Committee also votes on measures on streetcar, taxes, prohibition of soda bans.

Gov. Nathan Deal Tuesday morning signed a $19.9 billion budget for the coming year that increases spending $600 million but doesn’t provide cost-of-living raises for the state’s 200,000 employees and teachers. The state budget includes spending cuts in nearly every department, from agriculture to technical colleges but also funnels millions more into k-12 education and public health care.

Does the school voucher debate belong on its own bill, or within the state budget? The Wisconsin Senate's top Democrat is demanding a stand-alone bill, but Gov. Walker calls that idea "ridiculous."

The Hawaii State Legislature today voted unanimously in both the House and Senate to approve the state budget for the upcoming FY2013-2015 biennium.

Resolving the state budget is becoming more challenging, with signs that tax revenue collections will be sluggish for the key month of April, a top Senate Republican leader said Monday.

Gov. John Hickenlooper on Monday signed into law a $20.5 billion state budget for next year, lauding the measure as both "prudent" and "forward looking" as it doles out cash to public schools and offers slight pay increases for state employees. Democrats, who control both chambers and the governor's office, passed the budget bill in the Senate on a party-line vote with all Republicans in opposition. And in the House, just nine Republican lawmakers signed on in support of the bill.

From a repeal of residency rules for local police to softening regulation of rent-to-own stores in Wisconsin, key GOP lawmakers for now are keeping dozens of items in the state budget that don't belong there, according to their nonpartisan budget office.

The Ohio State Senate will spend a lot of time poring over hundreds of smaller policy proposals shoved into the 4,509-page budget bill.

The overall Florida state budget will be roughly $74 billion, but much of that is tied to trust funds and federal cash that lawmakers don't control. This year's $26.9 billion lawmaker-controlled portion of the budget is up from $24.7 billion last year.

State Senate Democrats helped pass a budget Friday they didn't much like. With the GOP driving the process, Democrats are working to bargain for what they can.

To be fully funded, Delaware must increase its annual contribution to the pension system based on a market valuation of plan liabilities. This paper analyzes Delaware’s pension system on a fair-market or government- guaranteed basis, with reference to the average US Treasury rate on 10- and 20-year bonds in June 2012. A discussion of the discrepancy between current government accounting conventions and the fair-market value approach and the implications for plan management follows.

The accountability measurements identify societal goals and iterates specific means of achieving them. While many states list specific goals they want to attain and the means to measure the goals, there is still little accountability for failure to reach stated goals. The measures in place are primarily numerical. By comparing rates and statistics annually, each state can determine the success of the specific tactics used to attain the accountability measures. No states compare their own success with that of neighboring or similarly situated states.

This guide serves as an overview of the basics of municipal bankruptcy, and boils down the municipal bankruptcy process so that officials and citizens have a framework within which to discuss whether bankruptcy is a viable option. It outlines who, what, where and when, as well as costs and benefits.

It is well understood that the federal government must make spending cuts-these cuts will most likely drastically change the amount of federal dollars that are allocated to the states. Unfortunately for most states, dependence on federal funding has continually risen since 2008.

Was the slow recovery of the U.S. economy from the trough of the Great Recession anticipated? 

Alternative views on the problem the United States is facing: financing retirement consumption as its population ages.

States will face particularly intense budgetary challenges in education and health care in fiscal 2013, putting pressure on all budget areas - including corrections and infrastructure. As budgets face strain from slow revenue growth and expenditure pressures, states will likely confront tough budgetary choices in the next fiscal year.

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.

An introduction to how the state budget process works and a glossary of terms used in the process.

State Budget Solutions recommends that state legislators take action in 2013 to resolve the serious state financial crises by changing their focus from inputs to outcomes by redesigning budgets from the ground up based on priorities and performance.

The ongoing state budget "crisis" strongly underscores the urgent need for North Carolina to adapt significant state budget reforms, including putting North Carolina taxpayers back in charge of approving new debt, and forcing legislators and state agencies at reasonable intervals to justify all spending, not just spending increases.

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.

To keep the state budget in balance over the long term, Minnesota must better manage the spending side of the ledger.  Over the past 40 years, total state expenditures from all funds increased at double-digit rates in all but four biennia.  To control spending, Minnesota must adopt bold new budget tools and processes.

The state government should refrain from onerous interference into the private market and limit pork, and here are 10 suggesitons for doing so.