Those who thought that a 40% decrease in revenues wouldn’t affect services…38% of the population(!), not 28%. And the decrease in property tax revenues was actually much greater than that. Sorry, but that is insanely idiotic.
And I fully understand [/quote]
The only problem with this claim is the fact that property tax revenues have increase faster than population growth and inflation combined.
The demographics and related spending in this state have shifted dramatically over this period. This shift has caused an increase in per-capita spending, especially in education, prison costs, and health and welfare costs.
Found this interesting site that charts the growth of various types of state and local spending. Not sure how it copies over, but compare state and local spending on pensions, healthcare, welfare, defense, etc.; you’ll see that the spending in other categories has outstripped, by far, the growth in spending on pensions.
