Yes, we are talking about Tennessee’s budget woes.

Gov. Phil Bredesen says the state will have to cut back as well:

The state should cut from TennCare spending, higher education and employees’ salaries to respond to its deepening economic downturn, Gov. Phil Bredesen told lawmakers Monday, saying the state must act “decisively and conservatively” to weather its financial crisis.

Bredesen presented the General Assembly with a broad outline for $468 million in cuts from the 2008-09 budget plan he presented in January, before revenues began to drop sharply. His budget amendments also include plans to close the state’s $315 million budget gap this fiscal year.

Blogging legislator Stacey Campfield wrote this yesterday:

Well the word has come out that we are going to offer buy out packages to 2,011 “non essential employees” of the state. The package is most likely going to include one years pay and free college education for new hires and one year pay for retirees.

Progressive Nashville focuses on education:

Gov. Bredesen’s budget speech last night was a disappointment, but it was one to be expected.

One of the greatest disappointments was his decision not to expand the pre-K program. He tried to put a good face on it saying, “every classroom and every teacher we pay for today is again paid for, with inflation, in this budget.” That’s little comfort to the students who won’t get the benefits of pre-K and the school districts who won’t see graduation rates increase.

Nashville’s public school district is waiting to hear how the cuts will trickle down.

Nashville’s public school district is still waiting to learn the exact ramifications of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s revised budget, according to Metro Nashville Public Schools Acting Director Chris Henson.

Henson said Monday evening that he knows the district will be receiving less money than anticipated. But he doesn’t yet know how much.

“They’ve not given us any hard numbers,” Henson said. “We’re waiting to see what the new state BEP revenue number might look like without the BEP 2.0 enhancements, … with just the inflationary increase. … We just know that there’s not going to be as much state revenue as initially projected and estimated, so we’ll have to make adjustments and revisions to our budget accordingly.”

Hobbs is here:

Tom Humphrey points out that while Bredesen seeks to cut $80 million out of a planned $100 million expansion of TennCare to cover thousands of medically needy Tennesseans, he didn’t let the budget woes preclude him from proposing to stash $100 million in an “economic development contingency fund.”

Left Wing Cracker alerts state employees about this.

If you have a relative or a friend that is a state employee, you may want to direct them to this site so that they can see and hear the presentation of Finance Commissioner Dave Goetz regarding the state budget.

The fallout has just begun.