A small hissy fit over our money

It’s been more than three years since “Saturday Night Live” made our state government the butt of a nationwide joke with its sketch, “30 hissing possums in a barn.”

We’ve progressed.

These days, it’s more like 30 hissing mathematicians in an outhouse. We’re days away from a new fiscal year and apparently no one up on High Street knows how much money the state will have. We are, to be generous, not off to a good start.

Our dear leaders are fond of saying government should operate more like the average family sitting around the kitchen table. That would be the family that never balances its checkbook and tells the bank, “We can’t be overdrawn, we still have checks.”

OK, I exaggerate. It’s more like the family that has a rich Uncle Sam who pays most of its bills. You know, the family with maxed-out credit cards and a couple of Town Cars in the garage.

We like to wag our fingers at our Uncle Sam because he’s not more like us with a balanced budget. Except he’s just like us, only on a grander scale.

Our budget is balanced and Uncle Sam has too much debt. Except we have debt, too. We just call it bonds. Which is kind of like calling chicken “coq au vin.” It sounds nice, but a few days ago, it was just a bird in a factory-sized barn.

Treasurer Lynn Fitch threw a fit when she saw what our Legislature was up to. She questioned some of the things the state plans to spend borrowed money on and the amount of money it was planned to spend to pay off its debts.

Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said any problems there could be rectified by the Legislature next year and the Bond Commission this year.

The state owes $4.2 billion. To Fitch’s credit, she puts that information up front on her website along with the cheerful message that every man, woman and child in the state essentially owes $1,746, thanks to our fiscally prudent leaders.

It’s like the patriarch who puts the family grocery bills on plastic and hopes to die owing the banks a bundle. That’s financial planning.

Then there’s the pension problem. In a world where private pensions are little more than fond memories, our state is generous to its employees.

There’s a reason big business isn’t fond of pensions for workers. It’s bad for the bottom line.

Take Mississippi, for example. It has a staggering amount of unfunded pension liability.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Mississippi has $15.4 billion of unfunded costs. That’s about 15 percent of all personal income in the state, it says.

But look on the bright side. Five states are worse off than we are. Also, those numbers are from 2013 and Pew said Mississippi is showing signs of improvement. The next time you’re in Slidell, buy an extra Powerball ticket on behalf of the state.

Which brings us back to the folks with their hands on the tiller of this leaky boat.

They don’t know how much money they have going in. It is an elusive number but given that the biggest variable is the economic performance of the state, I’d lowball those numbers.

State officials, ever the optimists, say the state is probably going to have $56 million less than they thought it would when they set up the spending plan. Attorney General Jim Hood says the shortfall is worse than that because the state was counting on grabbing millions it wasn’t entitled to from its agencies.

All of that comes on the heels of the waning fiscal year and two mid-year “corrections” to keep the budget in balance.

We have seen, in Great Britain’s vote to flee the European Union, what uncertainty does to financial markets. I can’t imagine our state’s budgeting process instills a lot of confidence in people looking for a place to start or move a business.

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 6:00 AM with the headline "A small hissy fit over our money."