Keep that bottle corked

Pipe in the feel-good music and somebody, crank up the confetti machine. Did you hear the great news?

Idaho’s sales tax revenues actually increased in April. That means people are feeling better about the economy and are spending money more freely. Where’s that champagne we’ve been keeping on ice for a year and a half?

The bubbly is in the fridge where it needs to stay, thank you. Might as well put the confetti away for now and turn down that darned music, too. It’s fine to feel good — important, in fact, to put the recession behind us — but it’s also lunacy to celebrate prematurely.

The flip side of sales tax revenues increasing is that Idaho’s overall revenue still fell an estimated $55.5 million under projections for April. And projections were none too ambitious to begin with.

So what does it mean? It means that for now, at least, safer is better.

Nobody is happy that public education got slashed 7.5 percent and that virtually every department in the state is having to make do with less. But until there’s clear and consistent proof that we have a firm grasp on revenue improvement, safer is better.

Safer is better as other taxing entities begin rolling up their sleeves for the marathon annual budgeting sessions that are now beginning or will soon begin. Cities, county, highway districts and everybody else with fingertips on the taxpayers’ pulse — safer is better.

Safer is better because even with Idaho’s economic deep freeze beginning to show signs of thawing, our state, our county and our communities remain vulnerable to outside forces. We need only to think about oil spills and teetering European markets to realize how interwoven the international economy really is. And if that doesn’t do it for you, try to imagine what the economic landscape would look like right now if the New York terrorist had been successful just a few days ago.

We’re convinced better days are ahead, maybe even sooner rather than later. But until they’ve arrived let’s be practical with taxpayer dollars. Hope for the best and plan for the worst. It’s a lot easier to spend unanticipated windfalls than it is to cut deeper than you thought you’d need to.