Debt Service Is The Quiet Budget Killer

Monday February 23, 2009

Bob Genuario, the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management, who is Gov. Jodi Rell’s chief budget architect, is sparing with the Finance, Revenue & Bonding Committee.
Around noon, he warned that the state’s annual debt service – the price of floating bonds for capital improvements, including schools and highways – is up to about 10.2 percent of the current $18-billion budget and has essentially doubled since 1997. In 1997, debt service was about a billion bucks and will be $2.26 billion a year by 2012, Genuario said.