Okay, so the lack of bad news now qualifies as good news. But we take what we can get.

During an informal briefing with capital reporters Monday, Gov. Chris Gregoire said state tax collections for June were right on forecast. Yes, they were abysmal – much lower than past years. But they were what state economists expected them to be.

How is that good news? Because as the recession has advanced, those collection reports have been well below what budget managers expected. And if you get enough of those in a row and you have budget problems.

And it just might mean that the recession has bottomed out in Washington state, or at least that the official forecast as presented by state economist Arun Raha has finally gotten pessimistic enough

Gregoire's budget chief Victor Moore said it is the first time in over a year that a monthly tax collections report was on target.

Moore said that Raha expressed "some joy in seeing lines going sideways," as opposed to downward, quickly.

Gregoire said there are still worries, namely that commercial real estate defaults may be increasing and exposing smaller state banks to problems they avoided in the housing crash.

"We are by no means out of the woods," Gregoire said. "September will be a very telling forecast."

When I say "down," I mean they were only $2 million lower than the projections. And that's a huge improvement over the past few months, when tax collections were $50-$100 million less than the forecast.

This is for the tax collection period from June 11 to July 10. The report from the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecast just came out today.

Considering that the Washington Department of Revenue collects between $1 billion (with a "b") and $1.5 billion every month, $2 million (with an "m") is chump change.

And apparently there was up uptick in the real estate market.