“the state some months pays out more in corporate income taxes than it collects”

Ah, Republicans. Always complaining about deadbeats who can’t live within their financial means and live off the government, yet almost every Republican-run state has budget problems. And how do they fix their budget problems?

http://www.governing.com/topics/finance/tns-new-mexico-budget-reserves-hit-zero.html

Falling tax revenues have left a $654 million hole in the state budget, and New Mexico lawmakers learned Wednesday that the reserve fund for day-to-day government operations is completely drained…

The Legislature is expected to convene next month in a special session in Santa Fe to transfer money to the operating budget from an account containing cash tobacco companies paid to settle a lawsuit…

The state government has done the same thing to money it’s made from the state’s medical cannabis industry (and patients) — sent the surplus to the general fund, while patients wait for months just to get a card because of a lack of staff.

Beyond patching 2016 spending, Martinez believes the budget for the 2017 fiscal year can be reset by cutting state agency spending. She has ordered a 5 percent budget reduction for departments under her control. Vacancy rates at many agencies, including the Corrections Department, already are at 20 percent…

The state Taxation and Revenue Department also reported that big data programs that analyze tax payments by companies are resulting in more refunds due to hundreds of tax credit laws on the books, and the state some months pays out more in corporate income taxes than it collects…

http://www.governing.com/topics/finance/tns-utah-west-jordan-facebook.html

A town in Utah that was competing to serve as the home of a new Facebook data center announced Tuesday it is withdrawing from negotiations with a subsidiary of the tech firm, leaving Los Lunas as the last known candidate for the site.

In announcing an end to their bid in a news release Tuesday, officials in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan cited opposition among state and local leaders to offering a package of property tax incentives to lure the Silicon Valley giant…

The facilities would house long rows of servers and hard drives that store and process vast quantities of highly secure information powering everything from online shopping to streaming movies. While the facilities are an increasingly important part of the global economy, such data centers function more like giant walk-in refrigerators for computers that generally require few people on the ground to keep them running…

Water emerged as a chief concern among Utah officials opposed to the project. Data centers are known to use large quantities of water to keep computer servers from overheating. Authorities in Utah bandied about estimates that the facility would require anywhere from 5 million gallons of water a day to less than 1 million gallons.

Los Lunas Mayor Charles Griego recently told The New Mexican he has seen data indicating the center would require far less water than the numbers reported by Utah news organizations. But Griego would not say what numbers he has seen for water usage at the proposed facility…

Hey, Mayor Griego, did you know we live in the desert?

I guess this state hasn’t learned the Intel lesson — a company that got generous tax breaks and is now a ghost of its former self. And so is the City of Rio Rancho, where Intel is located (but not for long).