The sort of year-end revenue forecasting performed by former Mayor Mark Begich's administration in late 2008 works well when the economy is stable, but not so well when things are as shaky as they were last year, according to a new report performed for Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan.

Sullivan released the four-page report by the Alaska firm Northern Economics at a news conference Wednesday. The mayor said he wanted to reassure the Anchorage Assembly that the numbers his finance executives are giving them in preparation for passing next year's budget are reliable.

The report does that: It says the method used by Sullivan's team to estimate how much money the city will have left over at the end of the year "is more sensitive to current economic conditions ..." and is likely to be more accurate than last year's forecast.

Questions about the quality of financial information provided to the Assembly by the Begich administration last year are at the center of a long-running dispute between the former and current mayors, and among several Assembly members.

Begich's finance department projected in mid-November 2008 that the city would end the year with an $8.9 million fund balance surplus. The fund balance is money left over at the end of the budget year. Some of it needs to be set aside and reserved for emergencies and to reassure bond buyers.

In fact, the final tally showed the city $15 million in the hole at year-end, according to city records.

Patrick Burden of Northern Economics said the projection by Begich's finance and budget officials was so far off because of how they put it together. They had actual numbers for the accounts during the first nine months of 2008 but nothing for the last three months. So for those months they used the account performance during the last quarter of 2007 as a substitute. That would work during normal times, Northern Economics said. But financial markets at the end of last year were chaotic, not normal.

This fall, Sullivan's people took the actual results from the first three quarters of 2009 and used estimates for fourth-quarter revenues from hotel taxes, interest income, fees and so on to make their projection for the end of this year.

"During times of relatively rapid change, this method is almost always more accurate than a static cost projection from a prior year," Northern Economics said. "This is especially true during rapidly changing economic conditions, such as those we are experiencing."

A spokeswoman for Begich, now one of Alaska's U.S. senators, said Begich has no comment on Sullivan's report.

Begich's former chief fiscal officer, Sharon Weddleton, has pointed out that she described last year's projection as a draft. She told Assembly members the calculation was very complex, and that it could change significantly before the end of the year.