Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Many states are having issues right now with their public revenues. States have seen big budget deficits. When our legislators return, I think they're going to see a less optimistic revenue picture, but one that is much less disastrous than in other states. Clearly, revenue growth has slowed, but - this is where I'm going to give a big round of applause - but our legislators, backed up by their fiscal research staff last year, were very cautious about their forecast for revenue this year. So they built the budget around a very modest increase - expected increase - in revenues, and that's really serving them well now. We're actually seeing revenues run ahead of those forecasts, but if we get a dip in revenues in future months, that means we're going to be in much better shape because we did not build a budget around big expectations of major increases in revenues. Now, April's going to be a key month with income tax payments for clearing up what the revenue picture will look like. But I can say right now, we're in much better shape than many other states."