The Editors

Back in January on our Web site and in our winter 2009 issue of Nonprofit Quarterly, we profiled fiscal and economic conditions in 14 states from Arizona and California to Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Now we’re proud to introduce our second installment to this ongoing series covering seven new states—Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon.

Edward Smith is the managing editor, State Legislatures

The recession may be over, but states will continue to face high unemployment and lower revenues well into the next decade. The good news is that state economic forecasts over the past two years have been consistent. The bad news is they’ve been consistently bad. This article published with permission from The February 2010 issue of State Legislatures, the magazine of the National Conference of State Legislatures, sets the stage for our series, The State We're In, which describes state by state the extreme challenges facing the sector nation-wide.