Revenue picture brightens. Legislative Republicans reject the governor’s proposal for new taxes and more cuts in PERS.

Eugene Register-Guard:

SALEM — Lawmakers got the significant bump in projected state government revenues they were anticipating from the economic forecast released Thursday, but they didn’t heed Gov. John Kitzhaber’s call for a bipartisan budget deal by the end of the day.

Thursday’s good news was that projected state revenues are up by more than $270 million, a combination of higher-than-expected 2012 personal and corporate tax collections and steady economic growth.

Revenues for the biennium that ends June 30 are beating projections by $129 million, while those for the upcoming 2013-15 biennium, which starts July 1, are up $141 million, state economists said.

If the projections hold true, a small corporate kicker tax refund of $20 million will be triggered. It’s unlikely that the potentially larger personal income kicker will be triggered, however, they said.

The forecast is the last before lawmakers must finalize a two-year spending plan, one for which they will now have $16.9 billion in available general fund and lottery fund monies — an increase of more than 10 percent over this biennium.

That’s enough to ink the initial 2013-15 budget proposed by the majority Democrats. That plan would provide $1 billion in additional school funding over the next two years and would allow most school districts, but not all, to avoid further service cuts.

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