DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Iowa state budget experts said Friday that revenue will increase very slowly through next year as the state economy continues to gradually emerge from the coronavirus pandemic recession.
The three-member Revenue Estimating Conference is tasked by state law with coming up with revenue projections in December that Gov. Kim Reynolds must use in crafting a state budget for next year.
The group decided to increase revenue projections for fiscal year 2021, which begins July 1, by $38.7 million above the current year. That’s a miniscule 0.5% increase and provides for revenue of $7.97 billion.
The early projection for the 2022 budget is for a bigger revenue boost of $296 million, or 3.7% from 2021, which would push revenue to nearly $8.26 billion
Iowa has regained about half of the jobs it lost during the pandemic but is still about 75,000 jobs below where it was in 2019, said Holly Lyons, the director of the Fiscal Services Division of the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency and one of the conference’s members.
“To date the economic disruption is not all that bad for Iowa at the state level and it’s likely that the end result could be two years of very slow growth then return to decent positive growth for fiscal year ’22,” she said.
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