Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposals for a statewide smoking ban and benefits for same-sex domestic partners will be kept in the budget proposal, despite instructions from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau Tuesday not to do so.
Co-Chairs of the Legislative Joint Committee on Finance, Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, and Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, decided to keep the items in the budget based on the items’ potential fiscal effects on the state’s economy.
Tuesday, the lawmakers received a memo from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau identifying 81 items in the governor’s proposed budget that were deemed more policy items than fiscal items and therefore should be cut from the budget
According to the bureau’s director, Bob Lang, those items chosen to be cut fit at least one of five criteria: The item had no state fiscal effect; the policy implications outweigh the possible fiscal effect; the item has been, or currently is, the subject of separate, non-budget legislation; the item would be reviewed by a standing committee of the Legislature other than the finance committee; or the provision could be accomplished with a statutory directive, like an audit or report.
“We’re not making judgments on anything that’s good or bad,” Lang said. “The idea is, should the state budget accompany all of these things or should they be addressed by the Legislature in other processes that’s not the budget?”
According to Pocan, after the co-chairs received the original memo from the bureau, they requested an adjusted memo with slightly less-strict criteria, leaving only 69 items that were identified as having more of a policy effect than a fiscal one.
Of those 69 items, the chairs maintained 45 were more fiscal items than policy, leaving the remaining items to be voted on.
“We’re just starting that process right now,” Pocan said. “Lots of things could change.”
However, Republicans are skeptical the items will be removed from the final budget.
According to Joint Committee on Finance ranking Republican Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, the Democrats are simply trying to bury items in the budget that otherwise would not pass if they were voted on by the Legislature alone.
Committee member Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Green Bay, questioned the governor for including them in his budget at all after promising during his campaign in 2002 to veto all policy items from budgets.
“We’re just asking Doyle to keep his word,” Montgomery said. “Unfortunately, the governor has changed his position on that a number of times.”
The fiscal bureau has been preparing memos like this for the Joint Committee on Finance since the 1970s, Lang said. This budget included more policy items than the governor’s previous budgets, but other governors have proposed budgets with even more policy items in it.
The committee will begin deliberating the proposal on April 16 after finishing up public hearings on the budget last week.
