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News analysis: The cost of fixing a budget

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How many state lawmakers does it take to agree on a budget? Apparently, it takes 99 representatives, 33 senators, one governor, at least 100 aides and staffers and now an eight-person “special” Conference Committee.

In an effort to be more efficient, the legislature condensed the number of people involved in the debate to eight; four from the Senate and four from the Assembly.

It has been a year since the initial deliberations on the budget began; hundreds of hours of debate went into the first draft of the budget. The Joint Conference Committee was designed to make compromises between the deadlocked Assembly Republicans and Senate Democrats. The budget deficit is now in the hands of the eight members of the committee.

The committee was formed with the assumption it would make negotiations easier — eight people as opposed to 132. It may not have made things easier.

In the last week, at least 25 hours passed with little success.

The ratio of compromises to hours of debate is 12.5 hours to one compromise. The committee agreed on two minor issues and has since only debated the contentious UW System cuts and shared-revenue cuts.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau released data stating there were 96 pieces of independent legislation tacked onto the budget. These are bills the legislature either did not have time for or could not agree on. Campaign-finance legislation came to a halt because the Assembly and Senate couldn’t compromise, so now it has been added to the budget-reform bill.

There are two separate comprehensive campaign finance bills, one from the Senate and one from the Assembly. Now it is up to the eight on the committee; unfortunately, it may only prolong the process. The committee is debating not only the budget repair bill and all of the proposed cuts, but also the 96 pieces of legislation.

The cuts to the UW System proposed by each side are drastically different; so far, it doesn’t seem plausible either side will meet halfway on any issue. The initial proposal by the governor would cut $51 million from the UW System; the Assembly proposed $180 million and the Senate countered with $20 million. Senate Democrats proposed a compromise of $25 million — although good for the UW System, it was not a compromise Assembly Republicans would accept.

Although there has been debate on the major issues, it does not appear the committee is any closer to a decision. At the rate they are going, it may be another 4000 hours before all 320 differences are negotiated.

Morgan Felchner (mefelchner@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in political science.