"(The Center Square) — South Carolina doesn’t produce budget stress tests or a long-term budget assessment, and a non-profit group says the Palmetto State, like others nationwide, should start preparing for economic uncertainty.
According to a report from Pew Charitable Trusts, 15 states have developed long-term budget assessments, while 13 have performed budget stress tests.
In recent years, states have benefited from an influx of federal aid and better-than-anticipated tax revenues. However, Pew experts say state leaders should prepare for more budget shocks."
Now Available
Our annual report on state fiscal health. Debt among the states improved slightly. Going from $1.2 trillion down to $938.6 billion.
What happened?
How did your state do? Read the full report below.
https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/financial-state-of-the-states-2023
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This year's report found that 31 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills.
To encourage the publication of transparent and accurate government financial information, Truth in Accounting has created a transparency score for financial reporting by the states.
Includes “South Carolina now leads the nation on timely financial reporting, SC Comptroller Richard Eckstrom announced today. The state’s 136-day publication window for its 2020 comprehensive annual financial report is the nation’s best – and nearly 11 weeks better than the national average. The group Truth in Accounting released the annual ranking last week.”
PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Truth in Accounting's twelfth annual Financial State of the States report, a nationwide analysis of the most recent state government financial information.
The 2020 Financial State of the States report surveys the fiscal health of the 50 states prior to the coronavirus pandemic. This data is released today by Truth in Accounting (TIA), a think tank that analyzes government financial reporting.
Mark Sanford has formed a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Americans about the dangers of the financial path of the country.
When hotel rooms are empty, so are municipal bank accounts for accommodations taxes
Colorado and South Carolina have pulled back from making additional payments to their underfunded pensions, moves that may play out in other states that are struggling to balance budgets as the coronavirus ravages tax revenue.
How large could the shortfall in state government general revenues be, amidst the coronavirus and related crises?
As a result, taxpayers are now out billions – including government debt and private investment risk that was essentially socialized by their “leaders” via the now-notorious 2007 “Base Load Review Act”
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wants to close the $32 billion state retirement system’s defined benefit pension plan and move all new state workers into a defined contribution plan. “I’m asking that we – at the end of this year – close enrollment in the current defined benefit plan,” McMaster said during his State of the State address last week
“… a chart depicting the chain of accountability in state government misrepresents who is really in control. The ‘Organizational Chart’ (Chart) contained in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) adds to the larger picture emerging of disingenuous borrowing practices in South Carolina. … Taxpayers owe billions with interest, borrowed for projects and programs that rarely benefit most citizens. Even worse than the cost of state debt is how it’s guaranteed … That’s why South Carolinians should care about a one-page chart in an accounting document whose primary audiences are credit raters and bondholders.”
About 591,000 South Carolinians, including 142,652 retirees, are enrolled in state pension plans.
South Carolina, where a third of its annual revenues comes from the federal government and more than 15 percent of its residents live in poverty, could be among those states seeing less federal money than needed to take care of its population due to an added question on the 2020 census of a responder’s and their household’s citizenship status, according to plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit.
Southern California, which has seen Orange County and San Bernardino go bankrupt in recent decades, should be well versed on the significant risks that come with financial mismanagement. Nevertheless, in November, Los Angeles voters will weigh in on whether or not the city should launch a publicly-owned (read taxpayer-backed) bank.
It was supposed to make the tax incentives that governments dole out to lure industry easier to track, but South Carolina counties don’t always agree on how much — and what — information they need to disclose under the accounting rule that calls for it.