‘Everybody’s been dreading it’
Mike Ferguson, Gov. Butch Otter's chief economist, said of today's new state tax revenue forecast, "Everybody's been dreading it, but I don't think anybody's going to be particularly surprised by it, because we've known that things have not gone terribly well. Hopefully we're getting closer to the bottom." Ferguson said employment in Idaho actually is forecast to start growing in fiscal year 2010, "but this is still September - we've got a ways to go before we're there, and it's still not going to feel that great." The fiscal year started on July 1. "What this does," Ferguson said, "is it gives some hard numbers that the policy makers can chew on and figure out how they're going to deal with it." You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.