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In Hawaii, state employees are bracing for furloughs of three days a month over the next two years, the equivalent of a 14 percent pay cut.
Illinois announced last week that it would temporarily stop paying about $15 million a year for about 10,000 funerals for the poor. Oklahoma is cutting back hours at museums and historic sites, Washington is laying off thousands of teachers and New Hampshire wants to sell 27 state parks.
And in California, where the $24 billion deficit for the coming year is the nation's worst, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing thousands of prisoners early and closing more than 200 state parks.
Meanwhile, Maine is adding a tax on candy and ski tickets, Wisconsin on oil companies and Kentucky on alcohol and cellphone ring tones.
With state revenues in free fall and the economy choked by the worst recession in 60 years, governors and legislatures are approving program cuts, layoffs and, to a smaller degree, tax increases that were previously unthinkable.
All but four states must have new budgets in place less than two weeks from now — by July 1, the start of their fiscal year. But most already are predicting shortfalls as tax collections keep shrinking, unemployment rises and the stock market remains in turmoil.
"These are some of the worst numbers we have ever seen," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, adding that the stimulus money that began flowing this spring was the only thing preventing widespread paralysis, particularly in the areas of education and health care.
"If we didn't have those funds, I think we'd have an incredible number of states just really unsure of how they were going to get a new budget out," he said.
The states where the fiscal year does not end June 30 are Alabama, Michigan, New York and Texas.
Even with the stimulus funds, political leaders in at least 19 states are still struggling to negotiate budgets, which has incited more than the usual drama and spite.
Governors and legislators of the same party are finding themselves at bitter odds: In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, sued the Republican-controlled Legislature this month after it refused to send her its budget plan in hopes she would run out of time to veto it.
In Illinois, the Democratic-led legislature is fighting a plan by Gov. Patrick Quinn, also a Democrat, to balance the new budget by raising income taxes. And in Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, has threatened to veto a 25-percent increase in the state sales tax that Democratic legislative leaders say is crucial to help close a $1.5 billion deficit in the new fiscal year.
"Legislators have never dealt with a recession as precipitous and rapid as this one," said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Pew Center on the States. "They're faced with some of the toughest decisions legislators ever have to make, for both political and economic reasons, so it's not surprising that the environment has become very tense."
In all, states will face a $121 billion budget gap in the coming fiscal year, according to a recent report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, compared with $102.4 billion for the year about to end.
Overall, personal-income tax collections are down about 6.6 percent compared with last year, according to a survey by Pattison's group and the National Governors Association. Sales-tax collections are down 3.2 percent, the survey found, and corporate income tax revenues by 15.2 percent.
As a result, governors have recommended increasing taxes and fees by some $24 billion for the next fiscal year, the survey found. This is on top of the more than $726 million they sought in new revenues last year.
The proposals range from increases in personal-income tax rates — Gov. Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania has proposed raising the state's income tax by more than 16 percent, to 3.57 percent from 3.07 percent, for three years — to tax increases on myriad consumer goods. "They have done a fair amount of cutting and will probably do some more," said Ray Scheppach, executive director of the governors association. "But as they look out over the next two or three years, they are also aware that when this federal money stops coming, there is going to be a cliff out there."
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