Higher-than-projected state revenues show that Iowa is on the road to recovery, Gov.  Chet Culver announced Monday.

The state’s Revenue Estimating Committee’s (REC) estimates for 2011 fiscal year are $297.7 million more than projected last March, for a growth rate of 2.2 percent. Further, a preliminary estimate for the 2012 fiscal year projects revenues will be 3.3 percent higher than in fiscal 2011.

“I have been committed to keeping our fiscal house in order, creating good jobs for Iowans, and continuing our sound fiscal management,” Culver said in a press release. “That approach has prepared us for tough times, and today’s report demonstrates that. Though unemployment remains too high, these revenue figures point to a sustained recovery in which jobs should be following right behind.”

For fiscal 2011, growth was estimated to improve in the three major tax categories of personal income tax, sales/use tax and corporate income tax, with the biggest dollar increase coming in personal income tax, estimated to grow at 3.6 percent compared with a previous estimate of negative 0.8 percent growth. 

The REC members are Richard Oshlo, interim director of the Iowa Department of Management; Holly Lyons, Fiscal Division director of the Legislative Services Agency, and David Underwood, retired chief financial officer and treasurer of AADG Inc. in Mason City. The governor and the Legislature are required to use the REC estimates in preparing the state budget.

The REC will next meet in December to set the official fiscal 2012 revenue targets on which the governor will have to base his fiscal 2012 balanced budget recommendations.