Vermont Gov. Phil Scott on Tuesday presented a state budget for the current fiscal year that addresses a $180 million deficit caused by the COVID-19 pandemic without making major cuts to existing programs or services.

It also proposes using the remainder of the COVID-19 funding Vermont received from the federal government in April to fund a series of initiatives including $133 million for additional grants for businesses strained by the crisis.

Outlining the fiscal 2021 budget a morning press conference, Adam Greshin, Vermont’s finance commissioner, said that the plan represents a “calm hand on the tiller steering through turbulent water.”

“We’ve kept the calm hand because we believe, and continue to believe, that this is not the time for major changes that the dust has still not settled, that there are still a fair amount of questions that haven’t been answered, both in Washington as well as in Vermont, in our economy and our revenue stream,” Greshin said.

Last week, Vermont’s economists projected that the state would fall $182 million short in the current fiscal year because of the financial strain posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

But despite previous projections that the fiscal 2021 budget would contain austerity measures and proposals to cut spending, Greshin said the spending package “doesn’t vary dramatically in terms of the services we provide, the programs we fund, and the people we employ,” compared to the previous year.

It also does not rely on reserve funds.

The budget proposed by the Scott administration relies largely on a surplus from last year to fill the hole caused by the pandemic.

In July, after Vermonters filed their 2019 taxes, state officials reported an unexpected revenue boost, and estimated that about $110 million could be used to help address this year’s budget woes.

The tax revenue that came in ahead of the July tax deadline reflected earnings in 2019, when the economy was still strong.

Greshin said that the surplus combined with a portion of the $84 million that was freed up, but not totally spent, when the governor signed an emergency budget adjustment earlier this year, the administration found $130 million in savings.

In addition, Greshin said that the administration was able to move $30 million of revenue that wasn’t spent last year into the current fiscal year.

Greshin said these dollars came from the fact that state government had to “curtail” certain services at the outset of the pandemic — limiting state employee travel budgets, and delaying the opening of state parks, for example.

The state has also benefited from increased Medicaid payments from the federal government.

After the COVID-19 crisis, the federal government increased the rate at which it matches state spending on Medicaid by over 6%.

These increased Medicaid rates are expected to continue in the coming months, and Greshin said that means the state can spend $40 million less on the program this year.

In total, the governor proposed spending $1.66 billion in the state’s general fund — the main source of state government funding — down from what he proposed spending in January: about $1.71 billion.

Normally, the governor would have signed a budget into law in May, weeks before the start of the new fiscal year on July 1.

But the pandemic threw a wrench into this year’s budget process. In the spring, lawmakers and the governor crafted a partial budget bill to fund the first quarter of fiscal 2021 in June, and scheduled a legislative session for August and September to come up with a complete spending package.