Fiscal Year 2012 state budget: From can to can’t?
Mississippi faces a budget crisis – and jaded readers may feel free to insert yawn here. But in the parlance of Mississippi farm families, state government has finally in fiscal terms gone “from can to can’t.”
The term “budget crisis” has become as politically meaningless in Mississippi over the last decade as “moonlight and magnolias” is in actually describing this state in 2010.
It seems there is at least an annual “budget crisis” – usually deemed so by a state agency or special interest group that isn’t getting as much money as they want from state government.
But as Mississippi lawmakers begin to craft a Fiscal Year 2012 state budget, it is quickly evident that the state is now – like the U.S. and much of the global economy – in uncharted fiscal waters.
Clarion-Ledger
9/26/10
