Slide 31 of 84

In other states, there are two other provisions that are quite common. One is that the Governor may not sign a deficit budget. It can be argued that that is not necessary in Michigan since legislature is prohibited from sending an unbalanced or deficit budget to the Governor in the first place. So the Governor wouldn't be put in a position of signing a deficit budget.

The second is that the state may not carry over a deficit from a prior year. While that is not prohibited in Michigan, a deficit from the prior has first claim on resources in the next year and it must be included in the appropriations bill and covered as if it were part of next year budget. The constitutional framers recognized that deficits might occur despite the best fiscal planning and legal safeguards and evidently concluded from a practical standpoint that you can outlaw deficit budgets but not budget deficits.