Find Your State’s Analytical Tools to Build Fiscal Sustainability
Database of long-term budget assessments and budget stress tests
Data Visualization
December 5, 2024
SHARE
Editor’s note: The map and database were updated May 19, 2025, to include additional budget stress tests and long-term budget assessments.
For state government budgets to stay on a sustainable path, policymakers must maintain a long-term perspective, informed by high-quality data and analysis. In a 2023 report, “Tools for Sustainable State Budgeting,” The Pew Charitable Trusts identified and defined two analytical tools—long-term budget assessments and budget stress tests—that can help policymakers ensure that today’s revenue and spending decisions do not cause budget problems in the future.
Based on that report, Pew created a database to track the long-term budget assessments and budget stress tests conducted by states throughout the country since 2018. (See Figure 1.) Lawmakers can use the information and reports collected here to find the latest analysis of their state’s fiscal outlook; study authors can learn from studies published in other states to develop or refine their own analyses; and researchers can glean insights on states’ fiscal conditions.
Source: Pew analysis of state documents and information provided by state officials
The database comprises all long-term assessments and stress tests published since July 1, 2023. Analyses issued before that date are also included if they are the most recent study of their type produced by a state. For example, a New York stress test from 2021 is included because New York has not published a stress test since.
Pew plans to update the database at least twice a year and welcomes suggestions of analyses that may meet its definitions of long-term budget assessments and budget stress tests but are not currently included.
Summary/Excerpt: "Rather than a reserve of 10 percent of General Fund taxes, as a long‑term target, the state needs a reserve approaching 50 percent of General Fund taxes."
Summary/Excerpt: Stress test shows a negative cash balance of 37 million in FY 26 and $1.8 billion in FY 27. "In comparison, Budget Stabilization Fund balance is $1.6 [billion]."
Summary/Excerpt: "It is quite likely that Oregon’s reserves are adequate to weather a potential downturn given that a mild to moderate recession is the most likely pessimistic scenario."
Summary/Excerpt: "Under the current tax law, including the income tax reductions that occur if revenues hit specific triggers, revenues will be insufficient to sustain current services in the second half of this decade, assuming service costs rise with anticipated growth in population and inflation. Absent policies to increase state revenues, state policymakers may have few options other than making several billion dollars in reductions in expenditures to ensure a balanced budget."
Office: Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability
Summary/Excerpt: "Slower revenue growth and larger uncertainty surrounding ongoing federal policy changes will make crafting the State’s budget more difficult moving forward. Maintaining the State’s financial progress will require careful management and strategic planning."
Summary/Excerpt: "Connecticut may have buffers and reserves sufficient to fully close budget shortfalls in the event of a mild recession akin to the dotcom bust but not to fully close shortfalls in the event of a more severe event similar to the Great Recession."
Summary/Excerpt: "Without significant ongoing actions to reduce obligations and/or make additional revenues available, the State would exhaust the 15.0 percent General Fund reserve before FY 2029-30, even without a recession. The recession scenarios only accelerate the depletion of the reserve."
Summary/Excerpt: "Spending growth outpaces revenue growth through projections for fiscal year 2029. The projected general fund shortfall for the FY 2028-29 biennium is now $5.995 billion, $852 million worse than November estimates. Shifting policies at the federal level introduce significant uncertainty to the projections."
Summary/Excerpt: "…[I]t is easy to see where the projected expenditures outpace projected revenues (beginning in FY 2027), and it becomes obvious that any surplus revenues from upcoming fiscal years should not be expended for items that would add new obligations to the 'base budget,' but rather should be cautiously used for one-time needs or held for use to assist in offsetting future shortfalls."
Summary/Excerpt: "The budget appears to be on an unsustainable path. Without significant ongoing actions to reduce obligations and/or make additional revenues available, the State would exhaust the 15.0 percent General Fund reserve before FY 2029-30, even without a recession."
