Democratic leaders in the Wisconsin state Legislature criticized their Republican counterparts Friday for a lack of progress in revising Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget proposal. Later that same day, Republican members of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee again drew verbal barbs for working what is considered a policy issue — qualified economic offers for teachers — into the state budget.
Senate Minority Leader Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, and Assembly Democratic Leader Jim Kreuser, D-Kenosha, held a joint press conference Friday to discuss the lack of progress Republicans have made on the state budget. The pair said that while 76 days have passed since Doyle proposed his budget in February, Republicans are no closer to presenting a resolution to the full Legislature about the budget, despite regularly criticizing Doyle’s plan.
“It’s now been 73 days since Gov. Doyle introduced his plan to balance the budget without raising taxes,” Erpenbach said in a statement. “Republicans have spent those days harshly criticizing the governor’s proposal. Now it’s time for them to finally lay their cards on the table and offer a plan of their own, if they have one.”
Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, co-chair of the Finance Committee, said Kreuser and Erpenbach’s criticism was an unnecessary attempt to disparage the progress made and that the committee was surveying what citizens of the state felt were budget priorities.
“Today the Republicans in general and the committee in specific were slapped with accusations that we are formulating our budget proposals in a manner that is totally opposite of how past budgets have been finalized,” Darling said Friday in a statement. “Public hearings matter, and the committee didn’t want to start voting until after we received input from the public on what he felt strongly about.”
Also Friday the Joint Finance Committee passed an amendment to the current no-call list legislation. Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, offered the amendment because he said that the no-call list hurt small-business owners.
“What the senator’s motion did is make an exception for businesses of 25 people or less or small businesses that make less than $2.5 million in revenue per year to call past and current clients. They can also call referrals,” said Judy Engels, policy advisor to Fitzgerald.
Under the original no-call legislation, small businesses could only call past or current clients to offer new services or inform them about rate increases for services. Engels emphasized that the amendment passed to help small-business owners and would not allow large corporations to call customers.
Opponents of the stipulation claim the amendment nullifies the agreement the committee made at the beginning of budget considerations to leave policy items out of the budget and opens the door for businesses to get around the current state law.
Aaron Nuutinen, spokesman for Kreuser, said the representative felt if the committee begins considering policy, then it should also examine the qualified economic offers, which Nuutinen described as basically salary caps for teachers.
“Tommy Thompson put the QEO into the budget in 1993, and in this year, Gov. Doyle is trying to remove it to save budget dollars,” Nuutinen said.
Nuutinen also said that since the offers were first implemented during budget deliberations 10 years ago, it was contradictory for the committee to refuse to allow the elimination of the qualified economic offers on the grounds that there should be no policy items in the budget.
