Budget writers got another shot of good news yesterday — in addition to a projected $231 in increased revenue, they also got a $90 million decrease in necessary spending from the “caseload forecast.” But what is the caseload forecast — and how did it make $90 million appear out of nowhere?
Our state has a two-year budget, so any sort of trend can add up in a hurry.
To help lawmakers and the governor write budgets, the Caseload Forecast Council keeps track of major trends in caseloads, which is a fancy way of saying “counting heads.”
- How many kids are in public schools?
- Are more people being arrested and sent to prison, or is crime going down?
- How many seniors are in nursing homes?
The answers to those questions tells budget writers how much money is being spent automatically. If you want to use the words of true political nerds in Olympia, you call this the “maintenance level budget.”
So if there’s a crime wave, or a population boom, that bigger caseload automatically makes state spending go higher, even though lawmakers didn’t vote to spend an extra dime.
Our state’s population is aging, so long-term care costs are rising — though not as much as expected.
The same thing happens in reverse, like it did today. Caseloads went down, so automatic spending dropped.
Education is the biggest part of the budget, which means a small percentage change in the number of school kids (about one million, currently) can mean a huge shift in automatic spending.
Keeping an inmate locked up actually costs far more than educating a 5th grader, or even a college student. It’s in excess of $45,000 per inmate per year. So a little change in prison population can also move the budget a lot.
Community supervision costs are flat after a series of policy reforms in the last decade changed how the state handles supervision.
Neither of those things happened in this caseload forecast. The student population is flat and the prison population isn’t going north or south in any huge way.
Once you count all the heads and run all the numbers, our state should save about $90 million because of caseloads. That frees up the money to get spent mindfully, on things lawmakers and the governor intend to improve, such as education or health care.