What do Massachusetts and Alabama have in common? They both are lousy at using the best tools available to craft state budgets. That news may come as a shock to Bay State policymakers who like to trot out the “We’re Number 1” banner at every opportunity.

With the fiscal 2015 spending process underway, “Budgeting for the Future,” a new report from the Washington Center for Budget and Policy Priorities should give Massachusetts officials something to chew on.

The center argues that state policymakers often focus on the fiscal problem staring them in the face rather than looking ahead to the long-term consequences of spending plans.  Most states do not use the right tools to tackle current fiscal realities and provide mechanisms to change direction if economic challenges arise.

Massachusetts is one of the worst, coming in at 37 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Connecticut was in the pole position, followed by Maryland and Tennessee, leading analysts to point out that effective budgeting “cuts across regional or partisan divides.” Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine were in the top 20. New Hampshire did not fare much better than Massachusetts.

Using 10 measures to determine how a state uses the “most effective fiscal tools” to design their budgets, Massachusetts scored a woeful 4.5, coming up short in four areas. The state does not use multi-year forecasts of revenues and spending; “fiscal notes” that detail multi-year projections; or baseline estimates of how much it will cost to deliver the quality and quantity of services it currently provides.

(To address the issue of multi-year forecasting, the Patrick administration became the first to create a Long-Term Fiscal Policy Framework.” But the framework wasn’t rigorous enough for the center: analysts found that it “lacked sufficient detail.”)

The Bay State also does not have an independent, nonpartisan agency that would do for the Legislature what the Congressional Budget Office does for Congress: that is, provide independent, unbiased analyses of budget issues for state lawmakers.

Massachusetts “needs improvement” in three areas: tax expenditure oversight, pension oversight, and pension funding and debt level reviews.  

The state earned a “well designed” designation in just three categories: rainy day funding; using a formal process to come up with a consensus on future revenue spending; and providing regular reports on revenues and spending to keep the budget on track.

The current Massachusetts budget outlook is bleak. According to the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, the state faces a $541 million structural deficit going into fiscal 2015. The current crisis at the Department of Children and Families is, in part, the consequence of past funding choices. Public defenders, some of the lowest paid legal professional in the US, are fleeing their jobs because they can’t pay off student loans on a $40,000 starting salary.  The next occupant of the Corner Office is likely to find that the $500 million in new transportation revenues is not enough to get new projects off the ground and deal with billions in delayed maintenance.

As the Washington-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities concludes, when it comes to “sound” budget planning, “there is much room for improvement in Alabama and Massachusetts.”

–GABRIELLE GURLEY    

BEACON HILL

State government shuts down, as Gov. Deval Patrick tells all nonessential workers to stay home during the storm, the State House News reports.

The House Ethics Committee votes to expel jailed state Rep. Carlos Henriquez, setting up a possible vote of the full House on Thursday. A copy of the committee report is here, which discloses that the vote on House Speaker Robert DeLeo’s complaint against Henriquez was 9-1 and the vote on his expulsion was 10-0.

The report from House SpeakerDeLeo’s gun safety panel wins the support of Telegram & Gazette columnist Clive McFarlane, but he also wonders whether the 44 proposed reforms will yield results.

Charlie Baker says the state’s broken health care connector has caused frustrated residents to call his campaign office, asking for help enrolling in health care.

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Scot Lehigh says Boston Mayor Marty Walsh faces a big test in dealing with a reform-resistant fire department whose interim leader has gone rogue.

Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera delivers an eight-minute State of the City address that promises no increase in taxes and the hiring of more police, the Eagle-Tribune reports.

Boston’s interim school superintendent warns that layoffs loom in the budget-strapped school department.

The Lowell City Council unanimously approves a measure tweaking its panhandling ordinance to target only aggressive panhandling, the Sun reports.

A dispute between two groups of parents in Braintree is threatening to kill the youth baseball season in that town.

CASINOS

Steve Wynn wants to pay for traffic improvements around his proposed Everett casino by tapping into the state gambling taxes the facility would generate. State transportation officials say Wynn is trying to shortchange them. Wynn has also been threatening to walk away from the project if Massachusetts doesn’t cut his tax rate to match the lower tax rate attached to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s proposed Taunton casino.

NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON

A Congressional Budget Office report estimates that Obamacare will reduce work hours by an equivalent of 2.3 million full-time jobs by 2021. The report has prompted a boatload of wildly misleading and distorted headlines.

Elizabeth Warren wants paying for college to be like paying for a car, with borrowers allowed to refinance their loans, the Daily Beast reports.

An unknown number of instructors at the Navy’s nuclear training facility have been removed from duty after reports of cheating by the instructors in getting the answers to certification exams in advance. It is the latest in a string of cheating incidents in the US military’s nuclear training programs.

The National Review says New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie‘s traffic problems have given new life to the potential presidential candidacy of former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

The Senate passes a five-year farm bill that cuts $8 billion in food stamps. The huge legislative package contains all sorts of other provisions, too, eliciting this bit of snark from  straight talking John McCain.

A Wall Street Journal editorial accuses Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo of caving to unions by pulling state pension funds from a top-performing hedge fund run by a prominent charter school backer.

ELECTIONS

Attorney General Martha Coakley trounces her gubernatorial rivals in a Suffolk University poll, State House News reports. Suffolk pollster David Paleologos sizes up the Democratic candidates’ pre-convention agendas.

The state Republican Party puts on a brave face, saying it will field a strong slate of statewide candidates, even though reality suggests otherwise.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Alternative Therapies, a medical marijuana licensee in Salem, is offering home delivery, the Salem News reports.

CVS Caremark plans to stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products later this year, giving up about $2 billion a year in annual revenue, NPR reports.

Most charities fail to raise money online because their websites are too difficult to read and many have not optimized their sites for mobile devices, according to a new study.

EDUCATION

Salem School Committee member Brendan Walsh dismisses a parents group that raises money for the schools as a bunch of “elitist snobs,” the Salem News reports.

Fall River school officials are considering establishing an early college program at the city’s B.M.C. Durfee High School, after rejecting a similar proposal for a city-run charter school last year.

Tennessee ‘s governor wants to offer two free years of community college or technical school.

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

Activists are dialing up the pressure on Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

As expected, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission downgraded the Pilgrim nuclear power plant to “degraded,” an action that will trigger more inspections by the federal agency.

Regulators at the EPA are struggling to finalize a proposed rule cracking down on emissions at existing coal-fired power plants.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Wyoming lawmakers delay a prison expansion effort and call in outside experts to figure out why the prison population is rising as crime declines, Governing reports.

MEDIA

New York magazine dives deep into Ezra Klein‘s new digital news project.

WHEN ELKS COLLIDE

The Norwood Elks lodge has filed suit against the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the United States of America to prevent the national organization from taking over and selling the building — worth more than $4 million —  where the local order has met for more than 90 years.