By the time the Legislature came into session in February, the tax cut had gone into effect. Changing things then would have amounted to a tax increase, and practically no one was willing to sign on to that idea, despite the fact that a gaping fiscal maw was fast consuming public schools and the rest of state government.

So, the state budget fell apart.

Two general revenue failures and a couple of other smaller revenue failures meant state appropriations to schools, colleges, health, mental health, prisons ... you name it ... got hammered again and again.

Here’s the punchline: The average taxpayer’s savings, based on the most favorable way of working the numbers, was $85.

Guess what? We’re set up to do practically the same thing again.

A 2015 law sets up another trigger to reduce the top income tax rate to 4.85 percent as soon as the state’s projected general revenue growth for the next year is more than the cost of the tax cut.

The cost of the tax cut: a little less than $95 million.

The problem isn’t just that the possibility of the state getting the projection wrong again, although that’s there too.