PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island is facing a budget crisis nearly as severe as California’s in the coming year because of plummeting tax revenue and surging unemployment, a report released Wednesday warned.

Rhode Island and Arizona are the two states that face the greatest risk of a fiscal calamity after California, according to an analysts of six factors, including budget shortfalls and foreclosure rates, by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Center on the States.

“California’s problems are in a league of their own,” the report’s authors said. “But the same pressures that drove it toward fiscal disaster are wreaking havoc in a number of states, with potentially damaging consequences for the entire country.”

The report went on to offer a devastating indictment of choices made by Rhode Island’s leaders in recent decades. It was released just a day after officials raised their estimate of the state’s budget deficit for the current fiscal year to nearly $200 million.

“The country’s smallest state has big problems,” the report said. “It was one of the first states to fall into the recession because of the housing crisis, and it may be one of the last to emerge, hampered by high tax rates, persistent state budget deficits and a lack of high-tech jobs.”

“Moreover,” the authors added, “Rhode Island has a poor record of managing its finances.” In 2008, Rhode Island tied with California for last place in the Pew Center’s Government Performance Project, earning a grade of D+ for money management.

“Auditors haven’t issued Rhode Island’s financial reports a clean bill of health in more than 30 years,” the group noted at the time.

Despite its small size, Rhode Island’s $590 million deficit in the 2009 fiscal year, which ended June 30, was larger than those of more than half the states. As a share of the state’s general revenue it was third-largest in the nation, after California and Arizona, at about 20 percent.

As far back as 2006, a year before the nation’s economy fell into recession, Rhode Island was one of only five states that ended the calendar year with less revenue than expected. Nearly half the states finished that year with more revenue than forecast.

Rhode Island has “never had structurally balanced budgets,” Paul Harrington, an economist at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, said in an interview with the Pew Center’s researchers. “Every budget has been a patchwork,” relying on one-time revenue sources, rainy-day funds and, this year, federal stimulus dollars, he said.

Rhode Island’s tax structure has also posed problems, the report said. The tax cuts pushed through by Gov. Donald L. Carcieri in June 2006 led to a drop in revenue just as the downturn began to reduce collections and demand began to grow for state services such as Medicaid.

At the same time, Rhode Island’s personal-income, corporate-income and sales tax rates are all higher than neighboring states.

The state also has failed to broaden the reach of the sales tax, meaning it foregoes income from an increasing number of transactions as the service sector’s share of the economy has grown. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates sales-tax reform would boost revenue by half.

Another problem is the underlying weakness of Rhode Island’s economy. The state has lost 37,000 jobs since February 2007, and its 13 percent unemployment rate is the nation’s third-highest, after Michigan and Nevada.

“Many of the state’s fiscal problems can be traced to the collapse of the housing market in Rhode Island, [which is] still recovering from the loss of its textile mills and defense work after the end of the Cold War,” the report said.

A housing bubble more than doubled the median price of a single-family home in Rhode Island between 2000 and 2005, when the price peaked at $294,000.

The run-up in home prices was partly fueled by subprime mortgage loans, many of which are now in default. The report said Rhode Island had the highest number of foreclosures in New England last year.

The collapse of the housing market also crushed the once-thriving building sector. “Residential construction has come to a virtual standstill,” Roger Warren, executive director of the Rhode Island Builders Association, told the Pew Center. Commercial construction has fallen, too, as credit has tightened.

“The state has yet to find jobs to replace its manufacturing base, once the mainstay of the state’s prosperity,” the report said. The number of manufacturing jobs in Rhode Island fell from 95,000 in 1990 to 48,000 in 2008. The sector has lost another 10 percent of jobs this year.

Amy Kempe, the governor’s spokeswoman, rejected the report’s thesis. “I would not compare the fiscal situation of Rhode Island to that of California,” she told the Pew Center. “It is much different.”

The other seven states that Pew said face a crisis are Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Wisconsin.

The full report is available at pewcenteronthestates.org.