“Clearly, oil prices have moderated and come back up pretty significantly over the last couple of quarters,” he said.

Lawmakers had $1.3 billion less to spend in crafting a fiscal year 2017 budget due to depressed energy prices, tax cuts and a failure to significantly reduce the number of tax credits and incentives given in hopes of generating economic activity.

“Hopefully, we have hit bottom and the numbers will not go back there,” Miller said. “And if that is the case, I think we won’t see the budget gap next year that we saw this year. There may still be one, of course. And it is way too early to try to predict those numbers, but I hope the worse is behind us and the budget has recovered somewhat.”

Miller said it is difficult and counter-productive to assign blame for the state’s budget predicament. He said the state has learned from past downturns, as evidenced by the creation of the Rainy Day Fund.

June gross receipts brought in $925.7 million, down $73.6 million from the same month last year.

Gross income tax collections, a combination of individual and corporate income taxes, generated $353.4 million, a drop of 13.1 percent from the prior June.