The Legislature’s joint Economic Outlook & Revenue Assessment Committee has convened this afternoon in room EW42 of the Capitol to set its revenue estimate, which will be submitted as a recommendation to JFAC. First, the panel is hearing from state Economist Derek Santos, who is updating his earlier forecast to include the impacts of the federal tax bill, though he noted it doesn’t include conforming Idaho’s code to the federal changes, because lawmakers haven’t yet passed a law to do that.

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The bottom line is in fiscal year 2018, we think it’s going to be a 5.3 increase from a very strong fiscal year 2017,” Santos told the lawmakers. And then for 2019, the state economist’s forecast is for 5.3 percent growth again. In fiscal year 2020, Santos’ forecast shows 4.5 percent growth in state general fund revenues.

“The bottom line is there’ll be $15 million more in fiscal year 2018 than we thought there was going to be,” Santos said. In FY 19, he said, “There’s $42 million more than we thought there was going to be a couple weeks ago.” In 2020, it’s $66 million more; that’s the administration’s revised forecast.