By Ricardo Lopez, includes “The November Minnesota state budget and economic forecast painted a rosy picture of the state’s finances: lawmakers have an expected $7.7 billion budget surplus, the largest surplus the state has ever forecasted. But some of the state’s top economists warn that surplus figure is incomplete because of a 2002 law change that prohibits budget forecasters from factoring inflation into government spending estimates. … ‘Minnesota’s current practice of excluding projected changes in the prices of goods and services from a majority of the spending estimate is fundamentally misleading,’ they wrote.”