The Mercatus Center ranked the five worst fiscally managed states in America and the five best fiscally managed states, taking into account not just states’ ability to pay short-term bills but also their ability to make long-run spending commitments; their underfunded pensions and healthcare plans; whether the states would be able to provide new services if needed; and whether a state is already overtaxed and overstretched.

The Washington Examiner has the lineup:

New Jersey and Illinois unsurprisingly are the two states with the worst finances, according to a new ranking published by the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank at George Mason University.

 

Those two blue states led by Republican governors, which have been wracked by fiscal crises in recent days, were joined at the bottom of the rankings this year by a third: Massachusetts.

 

Kentucky and Maryland round out the top five fiscally mismanaged states. Illinois, New Jersey and Kentucky have been in the bottom five in recent years and are “consistently doing poorly,” said Adam Millsap, a Mercatus researcher. “There’s probably a case to be made that those three are in the worst shape.”

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