It's 1983. Oil prices are in the toilet. The Texas economy is suddenly and unexpectedly reeling. Lawmakers, who happen to be in session, have a choice between big cuts or new taxes or something creative. Comptroller Bob Bullock and his top propeller-heads find a creative out — a way to balance the budget without big cuts or tax hikes.

They changed the due dates of the taxes already in place, borrowing from the future by speeding the arrival of money that wouldn't have been available under normal circumstances until the next budget period.

In another budget crunch just a few years later, they did the opposite, slowing payments due in the current budget a day — into the next budget. Lawmakers decided to pay state employees on the first day of the month instead of the last day of the month. That moved the last payment of the budget period into the next budget period, lowering what was needed immediately and making it easier to match costs with lower revenue.

No taxes. No cuts. Just some accounting and collection tricks. When lawmakers — now in the early stages of exploration into a budget shortfall that, on the low side, will total $11 billion — return early next year to construct a balanced budget, they'll look to timing maneuvers to cover the first $2 billion or more. It's a time-tested solution.

"I would rather see reductions made," says Talmadge Heflin, a former House Appropriations Committee chairman who now works for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. "But if they have no other choice than raising additional revenue..."

The state's accounting tricks really came into their own in 1991. That's right: Another budget crunch, one so bad that lawmakers approved a new tax bill, some "efficiencies" in existing programs, the state lottery, and hundreds of millions of dollars in "smoke and mirrors" budgeting that moved costs out of the troubled period and into a future budget. They delayed the state's payment to local school districts by a day, "saving" an astonishing amount of money. They held money in the general fund that was destined for state highways a little longer than usual and delayed other payments that would ordinarily come due in the last days of a biennial budget.

A few years later, lawmakers "repaid" the money they'd borrowed from themselves. A simple way to think of it: Over two years, the state makes 24 monthly payments from the Foundation School Program for public education. If they're writing a tight budget, lawmakers can — and have — delay that 24th payment into the next budget. They only make 23 monthly payments in the current period, and the budget can be balanced, in part, with that extra money. Things get better, the economy improves, and lawmakers write a budget "correcting" their earlier sleight of arithmetic by putting 25 payments — one more than ordinary — into a budget. And when things get tight again, they've got their trick ready to go again.

It's ready now. State budgeteers expect the gap between revenue and current service spending to be somewhere in the $11 billion to $20 billion range, a classic money trap that leads to conversations about taxes, spending cuts, expanded (and taxable) gambling, using the Rainy Day Fund and new federal stimulus programs.

And cheating, too. The budget writers could erase $2 billion or more of tough political decisions over cuts or taxes with accounting tricks. And when you get down to it, it's a victimless crime. "Obviously, it's easier (than the alternatives) — it's invisible to the public," Heflin says.

Delaying the school payment by a day would chop $1.4 billion from the total. That's instead of trying to cut that much from a program or to raise that much with a new tax. It's politically easy, and so it'll be at the top of the list when it's time to balance spending and revenue. Delaying payments to the employee and teacher retirement systems, Medicaid payments, and transfers of gasoline taxes into the state highway fund — all will be on the table.

The danger is a slow economic recovery. The timing games are one-time solutions, based on the idea that you can delay the fiscal worries until things get better, hopefully within two years. If it takes longer, you're in trouble. "It's a gamble," says Dale Craymer, president of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. "It works great if revenues recover and you grow out of the problem."

Moving up the tax due dates probably wouldn't work again. When that was done, sales taxes were due at the end of the month. Taxpayers knew that so long as their checks were postmarked in time that the money didn't have to be in the state's hands on time, and they could make money on the float. Moving the due date back ten days meant that most checks landed in the state coffers before the end of the month, and that's why it helped duck a tax bill three decades ago. With electronic filing, that sort of trick doesn't work anymore. Likewise, some of the spending tricks aren't there. The state never returned to paying its employees on the last day of the month, so that one-time delay is no help now.

Billy Hamilton, now a consultant, worked for Bullock in 1983 when the comptroller cooked up those changes in tax deadlines and got these games started. And he was there when another comptroller, John Sharp, expanded the use of delayed payments in 1991. "We used to say that 'on the last day of the state,' you know, when Texas goes out of business or whatever, someone will have to write a check before they turn out the lights."