Mirror, Mirror on the wall, How much revenue will we generate this fall?

Yup, you guessed it, today’s blog post is on revenue forecasting!  My current blog series is about some of the non-legal finance issues that are out there and revenue forecasting, while required by law, is a really important one!  There are many people that are involved with revenue forecasting in local governments. While many outside of government may just assume that there is some accountant or budget wonk sitting in a back room who is somehow magically able (or has some very scientific formula) to predict how much money is going to be coming in next year, we know better. There are many reasons to forecast revenues including planning for the future (are we going to have enough money coming to support our expenditures in five years) and to balance this year’s budget, but in North Carolina local governments are also required by law to forecast revenues.  Our forecasted revenues set the parameters on the budget, they define how much we can spend this year and may cause policy choices on both the expenditure and finance side (like setting the property tax rate). This is why it is explicitly required in the Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act or