Governor John Lynch today defended his 2 year budget plan before a joint Legislative Committee.
The Governor assured lawmakers that his budget responsibly closed an estimated 370 million dollar budget gap.
But he also admitted the state deficit was a bit deeper than he thought, due to another accounting error of about 13 million dollars.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
Governor Lynch presented his budget to members of the Joint Finance Committee much as he presented it to the full House and Senate the day before.
He said his plan was sufficient, and fiscally responsible.
although this is a lean budget, it is a budget that meets our needs. the budget does not include a host of new programs. instead, i focused on meeting our existing commitments and meeting our existing priorities.
The Governor's also defended his revenue estimates before the committee.
Those estimates included growth assumptions for business taxes of more than 5 percent a year.
The Governor reassured lawmakers that those estimates were not too optimistic, given a careful reading of past trends in tax receipts.
Governor Lynch had a very different message concerning a problem that had cropped up with his estimated expenses.
He said simply there was a mistake in his numbers.
commissioner hill has informed me that the department of administrative services made an error in the budget item for the cost of health insurance for state retirees, underestimating that cost for the next biennium by approximately 13 million dollars.
Commissioner Don Hill said he found the mistake when he reviewed year to year health care costs.
He said the numbers showed costs trending down, and he knew that just couldn't be true.
Hill told the committee high health care costs would remain a problem if no changes were made to the state's health plan.
He called the plan much too generous to continue to offer retirees and employees.
....insurance companies are telling us your plan's too rich. there's no incentive for any kind of management or for the employees. we got copays that are the same as they were in the 1970s.
Several members of the Joint Committee said they were happy to have heard from the Governor on the budget.
And they said they were impressed that the governor had admitted a mistake on his first day before the committee.
Representative Robert Wheeler of Goffstown said he sympathized with whoever made the mistake that tripped up the Governor.
He said he'd done the same kind of thing himself, several times.
But Wheeler said the mistake sounded more serious than it was, given the size of the state budget.
is it big? thirteen million in your pocket or mine would be big. 13 million in that budget is a couple of drops in the bucket.
The Joint committee will continue hearing testimony about the governor's budget for the next couple of days.
And the budget will undergo great scrutiny in the next few weeks, as lawmakers carefully review its inner workings.
