Short session has big problem: What to do with $2 billion?

Legislators may not have much wiggle room

By David Ingram
Winston-Salem Journal

RALEIGH

State legislators return to the capital Tuesday with lots of questions on their minds, but with one big one: What should they do with $2 billion?

That's the amount of money legislators expect to have available for new spending or for tax cuts, on top of an already-approved $17.4 billion budget for the state government's next fiscal year.

The surplus comes from reserves that legislators left on the budget table last summer, from unspent appropriations from this fiscal year and from unexpectedly high tax collections this year, particularly last month. The surplus is a record.