Fiscal Retrenchment in State Budgeting: Revisiting Cutback Management in a New Era

The eight states in the Mid-Atlantic region used a variety of methods to reduce budgets during the recession of the early 2000s. Their behavior was consistent with what had been seen previous recessions. They were similar to the classic cutback strategies and the administrative response models discussed in the literature. The findings have the potential to be instructive as to how states will handle similar situations in the future.