Red ink is on the rise in the state budget again, with a new deficit topping $64 million just one month after lawmakers met in special session to balance the books.

Lawmakers won't completely stop hoarding dedicated funds as they write this session's budget, though they'll reduce the practice somewhat, the Senate's new lead budget writer said.

Some existing or expiring fees, however, received new life, including an assessment fee on the state’s electric utilities, that had been set to expire in 2014. Gov. Cuomo proposed extending the added fee for another five years.

Corrections spending currently accounts for $53.3 billion in state budget expenditures nationwide, with the majority of funding going toward prisons. In 2011, corrections costs took up 7.5 percent of all state general fund expenditures.

Over all, the proposed $142.6 billion budget represents a 5.3 percent increase over the current one, but much of the increase will be covered by federal money provided for the recovery from Hurricane Sandy and the enactment of the health care law championed by President Obama.

Gov. John Kasich is quiet on fate of schools, Medicaid, taxes.

The Texas Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to begin a series of hearings Wednesday looking at proposed budgets for public schools and universities. Both absorbed deep cuts two years ago when lawmakers slashed the state budget in the face of a $27 billion shortfall.

Moody's Credit Outlook gave upbeat credit marks to Florida after the Florida Supreme Court upheld 2011 legislation that required state employees to contribute 3 percent of their pay to help cover their pensions in the Florida Retirement System defined benefit plan and to eliminate the retirement cost-of-living adjustment.

The study assesses claims that the standard panel data approach used in much of the "new" minimum wage research is flawed becasue it fails to account for spatial heterogeneity.

Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday proposed upending Minnesota's budget system by charging more income tax on those making more than $150,000 a year and lowering and broadening the sales tax, while giving the state a boosted early childhood education program and increased spending on higher education in exchange.