New York State Library	Currently Featured Site
	May 2004 Featured Site of the Month:
	Fiscal Survey of States (PDF)

Compiled every two years by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers, the Fiscal Survey of States presents aggregate and individual data on the states':

• general fund receipts
• expenditures, and
• balances.

Although they do not represent all state expenditures, these three categories are viewed as the most important elements in asessing the fiscal health of a state because they are used to finance most broad-based state services.

The current Fiscal Survey is a 68-page PDF document that was released in November 2002. At that time, things looked very bleak. New York was not the only state facing a budget shortfall; the survey found that 37 states had reduced their enacted budgets in fiscal 2002 and 23 planned to reduce their enacted budgets for 2003.

The Executive Director of the National Governor's Association attributed the fiscal crisis confronting most states - described as the most dire since World War II - to the combination of four factors:

• a long-run deterioration in state tax systems,
• the explosion of health care costs,
• the collapse of capital gains tax revenues, and
• an overall loss of revenue attributable to slow economic growth.

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