The latest state revenue estimate offers good news for Delaware.
The Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Council (DEFAC) continues to see enough positive economic signs to give Gov. John Carney and state lawmakers more to work with when they start crafting the fiscal year 2022 budget.
DEFAC bumped up revenue projections for both the current fiscal year and 2022 in its December estimate – giving the state a total of just over $202 million more to spend in 2022 than it did at its last meeting in October.
It added $121.6 million dollars to its 2021 revenue estimate, a 2.5 percent increase from October. The revenue forecast for 2022 is up just under $80 million – a 1.7 percent increase from October.
In both cases, the increase is based on rosier projections for corporate franchise and personal income tax collections, as well as anticipated increases in realty tax revenue this year and next.
These December numbers leave the state with just over $5.15 billion dollars to spend in Fiscal Year 2022.
This month’s numbers are the ones Gov. Carney will use to create the 2022 budget proposal he’ll offer next month.
DEAFC also approved the annual budget benchmark created in a 2018 executive order from Carney to promote budget stabalization. Using the benchmark, the state would spend a little more than 4.8 billion in FY 2022 and have about $347 million left over. Carney's executive order recommends that remaining revenue go to the state's budget stabalization fund or be used on one-time expenditures.
In response to last year's pandemic, the state used half of that fund - about $63 million - to bloster the 2021 budget.
State officials note that while the revenue estimates went up in both October and this month, they still lag behind what was anticipated a year ago before the pandemic.
Last December, DEFAC’s revenue estimate was almost $61 million higher than the one approved Monday.
And the state has seen more than $332 million in lost revenue when last December’s combined estimates for FY 2020 through 2022 are compared to where things stand now for those 3 years.
