Laid-off state employees won’t ever get chance to use the ballroom at the governor’s mansion

NASHVILLE, TN – Gov. Phil Bredesen’s announcement today that he will have to lay off a “serious” number of state employees as part of budget-cutting underscores the risk of Bredesen’s wishful-thinking approach to state spending.

“This year’s budget was based on a fiscal fantasy that the economic boom would never end, and Gov. Bredesen magnified that mistake by passing a budget that spent $723 million above the state constitution’s cap on the annual growth of state spending,” said Robin Smith, chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

The spending growth limit is tied to the growth of the average Tennessean’s income to keep government from growing faster than taxpayers can afford. Now, with revenue coming in several hundred million below the administration’s rosy estimates, and the state facing an estimated $500 million revenue shortfall, the wisdom of the constitution’s spending limit is obvious: If Bredesen had not busted the spending cap, Tennessee would not a deficit.

“As the state’s fiscal crisis has deepened in recent months, the governor has resisted all suggestions that perhaps now is not the time to spend $8 million of taxpayer funds on the addition of a party ballroom at the governor’s mansion,” Smith said. ” If Gov. Bredesen really believes, as he and his wife have insisted, that the ballroom project is vital to the state’s future, we urge him to make his upcoming budget address and announce the scope of the layoffs and spending cuts at the ballroom construction site.”