State Rundown 7/6: Most Legislative Sessions Come to a Close: Budget Problems Remain

This week we bring you tax and budget news in Alaska, California, Illinois, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Check out the What We’re Reading section below for a good piece on Kevin Durant and the minor role tax rates played in his decision to take his talents to Golden State. Thanks for reading the State Rundown!

— Meg Wiehe, ITEP State Policy Director, @megwiehe

• In advance of bringing the Legislature back for yet another special session next week, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker capped the state’s Permanent Fund dividend (a flat payment made to all Alaskans) at $1,000 next year, down from the 2015 payout of $2,072, and vetoed $1.29 billion in state spending. The dividend cap and service cuts will hit low-income Alaskans the hardest. However, an income tax, proposed in the governor’s New Sustainable Alaska Plan could provide some balance.

• Lawmakers in Pennsylvania agreed on a $31.5 billion spending plan in advance of the midnight June 30 deadline. SB 1073 increases funding to public schools and funds efforts to combat the state’s opioid crisis. However, there is little agreement over how to find the $1 billion plus in new revenue needed to fund it. Gov. Tom Wolf said he will sign the bill “as soon as there is a sustainable revenue package to pay for it…”, but lawmakers only have until Monday, July 11 to reach a compromise before the governor must start using his veto pen.
• On the last day of the 2016 fiscal year, Illinois lawmakers approved stop-gap measures providing long-overdue funding to higher education and human services for FY ’16, six months of FY ’17 funding for the above mentioned and state agency operations, and a full year of FY ’17 funding for K-12 education. While providing some relief for services that have been operating sans funding for the past year, these measures prolong uncertainty and instability by pushing the state’s day of revenue reckoning past the November elections.
• North Carolina lawmakers closed the state’s short session on July 1 without giving final approval to a proposal to enshrine a cap on the state’s income tax rate in the constitution via voter referendum.  However, the agreed upon budget for the new fiscal year includes a new, small income tax cut by increasing the standard deduction from $15,500 to $17,500 (married couples) continuing the state’s march away from reliance on the progressive tax.   

• In New Jersey, after rejecting a weird plan to pair a needed gas tax increase with a mish-mash of tax cuts that would have primarily benefited wealthy New Jerseyans, and then rejecting an even more destructive plan that would have slashed the state sales tax and blown a hole in the state general fund even bigger than the one they need to fill in the Transportation Trust Fund, lawmakers ultimately chose no plan at all and went on vacation. The state has been forced to declare a state of emergency and shut down most roads maintenance and construction. The bizarre saga will continue when the next scheduled Senate session begins on July 11.

• California officials have announced that seventeen (and possibly more) initiatives will appear on the ballot this November. Among them are several tax initiatives,  including extending the current income tax rates on high-income earners, raising the cigarette tax by $2 a pack, and state and potential local taxation on the sale of marijuana if legalized.

 What We’re Reading…

•  The Washington Post’s Wonkblog has a piece explaining that state tax rates were just one very small part of the calculation in Kevin Durant’s decision to sign with the Golden State Warriors over the Miami Heat or Oklahoma Thunder.
• Emmanuel Saez at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth has a new analysis on disproportionate income growth among the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 based on 2015 SOI data. Read the full analysis here.