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suae employees wno ap- " peared destined to receive no merit pay hikes at all.
At the same time Sen. Andrews was making his plan known, on another floor of the General Assembly Building, the House Appropriations Committee was holding its own extraordinary Sunday night meeting.
The members were busily engaged in formulating plans for spending $64 million in hitherto unnoticed funds which they turned up.
Like their Senate counterparts, the House committee also planned to use the money to, among other things, restore the promised teacher pay raise, give state employees as much salary relief as possible, and allocate money for higher education.
Meanwhile, back at his mansion, Gov. Robb viewed all these Sabbath evening events with concern. He dispatched an aide with a message for the committee members, but it was also clearly intended to make his position on these developments known to the public.
The governor said, while he applauded the efforts of the committees to come up with new money, he urged them to be prudent in view of the fact that he was far from convinced that a recovery of the national economy was at hand.
In point of fact, very little new money had been found.
Aside from a one-time windfall of $16.4 million to be realized from increasing the percentage of estimated income tax corporations and individuals would have to pay, the new money was, for the most part, a result of shifting spending priorities.
It is the assigning of these spending priorities which could—and probably will—keep the General Assembly tied in knots for the remaining days of the session.
For the first time, the Senate as well as the House has prepared a budget bill, and the effort to reconcile the two documents and come up with a spending measure agreeable to both houses could prove to be a monumental task.
That task will be carried out at a time when many economic indicators seem indeed to herald, at long last, an easing of the recession. The temptation will be considerable to gamble that in the months ahead the revenue picture will brighten and more funds will be available for needed services.
But the General Assembly budgeteers should bear in mind an important fact which was inherent in the governor’s warning.
The shortfall estimate of $305 million presupposes that a major economic upturn will take place this spring. That upturn must boost the state’s economic growth from the present rate of about 6 percent to a full 10 percent by the second quarter.
If it does not, it will be impossible for even the full Robb spending cuts to offset the shortfall. One hopes that this little detail has not been overlooked by the lawmakers in their zeal to come up with new money.
Alarmingly, there is little in the numbers presently available to encourage the hope that a recovery of this magnitude is going to begin so soon. And if it does not, the projected shortfall situation could well become worse instead of better.
If it does worsen, the consequences could be still more cuts, higher taxes, and even a special legislative session to deal with it.
Thus the governor’s words of caution about the course of the national economy were clearly in order.
For this reason, his urging that the lawmakers exercise extreme care as they go about shifting spending priorities in order to accommodate immediate concerns, no matter how laudable they may be, should be taken as words to live by.
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