We knew it was going to be bad, just how bad was up for debate, and really it could have been much worse.

But a 39.75 percent hit to state revenues is a gut punch.

Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration Commissioner Butch Eley made the announcement that revenues for April were less than the monthly revenues from the previous year. Overall state revenues for April for taxes collected in March were $693.8 million less than the state budgeted.

And that's only for two weeks of voluntary and mandated shelter-in-place orders.

“The signs of economic downturn due to the COVID-19 pandemic have begun to appear in Tennessee’s April tax receipts ...” Eley said, adding all tax streams had been impacted sales, franchise and excise tax receipts, along with Hall income and business taxes.

At least the state has rainy-day fund to pull from but Eley said it would "now be tested," mostly because we don't know how bad the April tax receipts are.

My guess is it will be more than a 40 percent hit.

Murfreesboro Mayor Shane McFarland saw the writing on the wall when he announced the city was developing its budget with a very tight belt in mind.

"We have made the decision that we are going to do no new borrowing in 2020. We will make the decision in 2021 on what we are going to do with projects and go from there," McFarland said, adding he thought it was the "fiscally conservative thing to do."

Revenue disbursements run a few months behind, for example Murfreesboro received the sales tax revenue from February at the beginning of April. McFarland estimated it could take up to six months to fully see how badly the city's budget has been impacted by the stay-at-home request.

We have an idea now.

This just points out how precarious our tax base is. We are too dependent on sales tax and tourism dollars in Middle Tennessee. Look north to Nashville, which is contemplating a 33 percent property tax increase to plug some of its budget hole. At least the leaders in Rutherford County have ruled out another property tax hike for this year. It's never a good time, but especially not now.

So why don't we take this time to develop a better plan?

We currently have 11 states that have legalized marijuana for personal use. Tennessee should be the 12th state. Here's why.

According to NORML, marijuana users smoke between 1,200 to 1,800 metric tons of the drug nationwide every year. But those numbers could be as high as 2,700 to 4,700 metric tons.

That's a lot of pot.

It's also a lot of potential tax revenue.

"Given a $1 excise tax and a price over $2 per joint, we assume commercial consumption would be cut by 40 percent to 9-18 million joints, yielding $3.2 to $6.4 billion per year [nationally]," NORML said. "We conclude that revenues from cannabis excise taxes might range from $2.2 to $6.4 billion per year."

That's a low estimate with Colorado topping $1 billion in tax revenue on $6.5 billion in legal pot sales in 2019 alone.

The first month of legal sales in Illinois returned $10 million in sales. Illinois budget officials believe they will generate $28 million in marijuana tax and sales tax revenue from legalized sales by June.

Legalizing marijuana won't completely heal the wound left by the COVID-19 quarantine, but it will help replace some revenue.

And if we're high, maybe we won't care so much about leaving the house.

I mean we are allowing alcohol deliveries right now, so why not legalize pot?