OPINION & EDITORIAL
Budget hiccup has simple fix
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by Mike Hahn
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The state's new biennial budget is now over 100 days late. The conference committee that is supposed to have remedied that problem has not met in public for weeks, even though it continues to do so behind closed doors. Even Gov. Jim Doyle's involvement in the process has had little to no effect.
The obvious question then becomes: Can anything get the Assembly and the Senate to pass a budget?
It looks like the answer is no. Not even State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster's threat that taxpayers across the state will face a $600 million property tax increase without new K-12 spending figures produced a reaction or a result.
Legislators at the state Capitol — along with a large number of citizens in the state — are becoming understandably frustrated, and with little other business going on, some Democrats and Republicans have decided to take matters into their own hands.
Two state lawmakers — one Democrat and one Republican — have introduced separate pieces of legislation that would cut legislators' pay for every day that a state budget is late. This seems fair. After all, if the most important job that state representatives and senators have is to pass a budget, it only makes sense to hold them accountable.
Another proposal would require the budget conferees to meet for eight hours a day, five days a week at the start of budget negotiations. As time goes by, the requirement would increase to 10 hours a day, six days a week and so on until a budget is passed. The kicker in this proposal is that any member of the Conference Committee who fails to show up for the meetings could be arrested by state police.
While it may seem a little overboard, the fact that any member of the Legislature would propose cutting his or her own pay or risk arrests in future negotiations shows that patience is beginning to wear thin in the Capitol.
Unfortunately, I have not heard anyone suggest the one solution that may actually help bring the budget stalemate to an end: Let the Legislature pass the budget agency by agency.
A few short weeks ago, the Assembly did just that when it passed a separate K-12 education bill to avoid the massive property tax increases that I mentioned earlier. The bill funded K-12 schools in the state at the exact same levels that the governor and the Senate had asked for earlier, but amazingly the Democrat-led Senate refused to pass the bill. Why? Because Democrats in the Senate believed that it was irresponsible to pass only parts of the budget and not the entire thing.
To remove the accusation of irresponsibility, the solution is to pass a statute that would allow future state legislatures to pass parts of the budget that are already agreed upon. It seems to me that this would be a simple and straightforward way to handle future "budget crises."
If it were the case that the state's budget did not continue from last year without a new budget passed, then passing a budget piece by piece may not be such a good idea. Fortunately, the state's budget does continue at last year's levels even if the Legislature fails to pass a new budget.
Because the state does not shut down without a new budget, the Legislature has the ability to pass one agency's budget at a time. Going back to the K-12 education funding as an example, if the Senate had acted and passed the separate budget, no other state agency or department would have been affected, and the potential $600 million property tax increase would have been avoided.
It is not only education funding that would be effected by this type of budgeting either. There are most likely several state agency budgets that could be passed separately if the Legislature were allowed to do so by state statutes. Not every agency is as hotly contested as Healthy Wisconsin or the UW System, so why should we hold other departments hostage because of disagreements on only a few agencies?
Maybe, before we start throwing legislators in jail for not passing a budget on time, we should step back, take a breath and do the simple things first.
Mike Hahn (mhahn@badgerherald.com) .is a senior majoring in history and political science
Anonymous (October 9, 2007 @ 11:48am):
Mike, you've been very middle of the road lately. I've come to expect a certain amount of disagreement with you and I'm not getting my fix for at at least the last two weeks. Im on vacation for the rest of the month. When I get back I hope to back read something to raise my Irish. K?
Anonymous (October 9, 2007 @ 12:29pm):
Or maybe if they actually compromised we could get a budget. The Dems gave up Healthy Wisconsin, yet Repubs don't think it's good enough. What's up with that?
Anonymous (October 9, 2007 @ 3:35pm):
Wait...what's your point? Oh. It's more than halfway through the column. Is this a news story or an opinion piece?
Interesting observation, however.
Anonymous (October 9, 2007 @ 4:50pm):
The Republicans are trying to disappear the budget. Remember the mantra about getting government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub? Word is that Grover Norquist himself is leading a rally in a few weeks to promote just that: the complete disappearance of all public services and agencies, and the State Republican legislators are clearly working towards that end.
Anonymous (October 9, 2007 @ 10:32pm):
"The Dems gave up Healthy Wisconsin"?? Are you kidding? We were the joke of the entire country with Healthy Wisconsin!
The Dems knew damn well that Healthy Wisconsin would never pass. They are simply using it in their rhetoric, to say that they "compromised", yet the Republicans won't. Give me a break. How dishonest can you get?
And as far as this column being an 'opinion' piece or a news story, I think the person who was asking that question should look up at the top of the page, above the title of the article.
And to the last commenter and any other socialistic, government-growing pontificator, you need to remember what government is for, and then prioritize the spending accordingly.
Anything other than police and military protection, prisons and jails, our justice system, and our infrastructure, is a luxury and should be cut or capped. Period. INCLUDING education.
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