TEXAS — State budget writers are expecting to start out billions of dollars short next year due to the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Comptroller Glenn Hegar has warned lawmakers they'll be $4.6 billion short of the revenue he originally forecasted for the current budget. Lawmakers will also soon get another update from him on what they'll have to spend over the next two years.

In an interview on Capital Tonight Thursday, Hegar said while sales tax revenue continues to be down, the budget forecast should be better than expected.

“It’s not as negative as we anticipated when we provided that new revenue estimate in July,” he said. “It looks as though the current two-year budget cycle is going to be substantially better. Plus, state agencies have reduced our expenditures so that will probably save about a billion dollars as well as some federal dollars that have come that can be utilized to swap out for some of the general revenue that we’ve been expending because of the COVID virus. So those things in total, actually make this two-year budget cycle look in a lot better shape than we were originally afraid of back in July of this year.”

But when it comes to how much lawmakers will actually have to spend for the next biennium, Hegar says it’ll be dependent on what happens over the next couple of months.

“I think Texas has a lot of tools in the toolbox,” he said. We’re going to get through this, but again, the biggest question is what’s going to happen in the next three and four months as we get into the winter time?”