Comptroller Kevin Lembo announced a projected $8.7 million surplus for FY17 (July 2016 - June 2017). While this can certainly be characterized as minimal, it is good to see that the current fiscal year is not in "crisis mode" as it was last year.
The next 2 budget years (FY18 and FY19) approach with deficits expected between $1.5 and $1.9 billion in each year. Based on this, we knew the legislative session would focus quite a bit on State Employee benefits and State Employee contracts. That was to be expected...and we were certainly spot-on with this prediction. There have been over 100 bills introduced this session that target State Employees! We knew we were popular, but this is a bit of over-kill. Many of these bills are duplicative but the target has been clearly placed on our pension and healthcare benefits.