MONTPELIER, Vt. -
Nearly a year ago Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin laid out his 2013 fiscal budget.
"This is a balanced budget," said Governor Shumlin last January.
That budget took effect July 1st and now that we're nearly halfway through the fiscal year, we know Shumlin's calculations were off.
This week he presented a budget adjustment bill that shows the state paid nearly $4-million dollars more than expected.
"It's um, pretty miniscule," said Vermont Representative Martha Heath.
Heath says that's not bad when you consider the overall budget is more than $5-billion dollars.
She says the majority of increases come from the Agency of Human Services, where program cost for putting homeless in hotels has doubled to $4 million dollars.
"That seems on the face of it really wasteful to us," said Heath.
We wanted to know how they'll make up the gap.
Lawmakers say not by touching your money, but shifting it around from others programs that didn't use as much, programs like Medicaid.
And as they work on next year's budget, Governor Shumlin says he wants to remain out of your wallet.
"You'll see us come forth with a budget later this month that will also be balanced, without raising broad based taxes," said Shumlin.
Whether that will happen though, is unclear because Heath says there are still a lot of unknowns about how new healthcare programs will be paid for.
"We are going to have to pay the ongoing costs for the exchange for example and how is that going to be financed," said Heath.
Lawmakers will continue to take testimony on the budget bill until next week, before they vote on it.
