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It's a bit of a mixed bag for the state's latest revenue figures.

New Jersey's budget got a boost from a strong holiday shopping season, according to the Treasury Department.

But overall tax collections we're talking from July to January were down by about $329 million, compared with the same period in the last fiscal year.

That news comes as Governor Murphy prepares to give his annual budget address to lawmakers later this month.

And just days after an independent group of policy experts warned the state is looking at a series of major budget gaps in the not too distant future.

Our budget and finance writer John Reitmeyer is with me now for the latest.

John, good to see you.

So give me the big takeaways from this revenue report because it's a little confusing.

It seemed positive, but overall, we're not trending in the right direction.

Yeah, it's one of those things where it's good to get a bump from holiday shopping.

It's good to have this past December season go better than than the one before it.

So that that's a good trend in the right direction.

However, overall, we are seeing revenues a little bit off where they were this time last year and that's not a big deal and it's not a big gap.

But the thing that's important to keep in mind is when the governor and legislators enacted a new budget for this state last summer, they counted on their being modest growth to back what would be the biggest budget we've ever had in New Jersey.

So we're now seeing no no growth.

In fact, we're seeing things go a little bit in the other direction.

It's not too late.

But you if you're going to be spending big, you want to see those revenues coming into matches.

Where where are we lagging specifically?

So two of the biggest revenue sources the state has is the income tax and the corporation business tax.

And those two so far are lagging now.

The big thing coming up in April, obviously, will be when people file their tax returns and that's usually makes or breaks the state budget when we get to April.

If we have a good year for income tax collections, we kind of glide into the end of the fiscal year in June.

If we have a bad year for tax collections in April, then we have to make adjustments headed into the end of June.

So we really don't know and we're in striking distance.

But if the current trend continues and we continue to fall behind, last year's pace, we are spending more than we spent the prior year.

So that creates a gap.

Okay.

So now that we're nearing the end of the state fiscal year, which is June 30th, what happens then if that shortfall remains?

How does the state make up for it?

Can it?

Yeah.

Generally the Constitution for New Jersey prevents a deficit like the federal government's allowed to run.

And so usually what happens is there are there are last minute cuts or sometimes if the surplus is big enough, the state will dip into budget reserves to paper over whatever the gap is.

And so if this gap persists past those April income tax collections, that's when we'll have to shift the conversation to those types of things because we're not allowed to get to the end of the fiscal year.

Imbalanced.

How much weight, John, because you wrote about this this week should we put into this report from these were folks from the Sweeny Center down at Rowan University sort of waving the flag about the trend of our spending, the state spending, and what they predict will be a big budget gap ahead.

It's certainly a big warning sign.

And these are this is a bipartisan group, former state treasurer.

There's a former chief economist for the state on this panel.

So heavy hitters who are have a lot of credibility when they do these exercises.

It's certainly not the final say because we're going to have changes in policy that can offset these projected gaps.

And we're talking about years from now, three, four, five years from now.

At the same time, it does show us if we stick to the current path, we've got trouble coming.

I want to ask you very quickly, we're coming off of the Super Bowl.

Big betting numbers, at least from what we can see so far.

How much did gambling and casino revenue online betting play into the revenue for the state?

It's one of the areas where they're where the arrow is going up, especially for online gambling.

And so putting aside how you feel about that, it's one of the growth areas in there in the revenue stream.

So so that's a good thing.

It's just not a huge part of the overall pie.

So in context, it's it's it's a nice bump, but it's not going to carry the day.

It's not going to fix any big fiscal problems.

All right, John Reitmeyer, thanks so much.

You're welcome.