Florida may be a place worth watching for states that are still struggling with the recession. Florida legislators just adopted a record $74.5 billion spending plan on Friday at the close of their 2013 lawmaking session.

As Republican Joe Negron told the Senate just before the unanimous vote to approve the plan, “While it’s true that our spending did go up, we have held $2.8 billion in reserve, we paid back a $300 million loan and we are spending $500 million for our state pension plan.”

Amy Baker, the coordinator of the state Revenue Estimating Conference, said that general revenue collations are now projected to increase by $1.1 billion in the coming year. 81.1% of that total comes from the state’s 6% sales tax, while 18.8% of it comes from the stamp tax on real estate activities.

 Standards & Poor’s Rating Service has shown that Florida’s situation isn’t entirely unusual.  State governments across the country are showing surprisingly strong gains from income and sales taxes.