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How did that provision get in the Budget?

Which legislators were lobbied?

Who wrote the language?

When did the Green Bay area Democrats know this provision was in the secret deal?

Nobody’s talking.

Carrie Lynch, a spokesman for state Sen. Russ Decker, D-Weston, said the language was part of a Senate Democratic caucus budget that was completed behind closed doors. She said she did not know if Decker was responsible for the language.

Pathetically, State Majority “Leader” Thomas Nelson refuses to offer any explanation.

Rather than be honest and upfront with the media and his constituents, he simply restates the one talking point on which Legislative Democrats are hanging their hat:

“For the first time in 32 years, Wisconsin passed a budget on time,” he said.

Weak.

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The recently-concluded State Budget process was a secretive, trust-eroding endeavor.  The end result of the backroom dealing was a document that jacks up state spending, raises taxes by more than two billion dollars, borrows billions more, leaves us in a two billion dollar hole and sets the stage for the return of massive property tax hikes.

The Legislature also passed the buck onto local government, including school districts. As those units of government adjust their budgets, look out!

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports this morning:

Nearly two dozen school districts in the Milwaukee area expect to see their general state aid drop by more than 10% next school year, setting the stage for potential large property tax increases later this year.

The fallout of the Budget is still being analyzed and we’ll be finding out more and more about how bad things are for months to come. Sure, the Legislature “got the budget done on time” but in their rush to cram this document down the throats of Wisconsin taxpayers, a full analysis of plan was not available to lawmakers before they cast their votes. In fact, we at the MacIver Institute are confident in predicting none of the lawmakers who voted for the final Conference Committee Report last week read the entire Budget.

The Budget was done on time.

But, at what cost?

The legislature violated the public trust. The Governor violated the Constitution. Spending, taxes and borrowing spiked. We’re still operating under a structural deficit and now property taxes are set to skyrocket.

We’d have preferred, and Wisconsin would have been better served by, a more deliberative, open and frugal process.

Even if it meant a missed deadline or two.

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We’ve worked hard to keep you up to speed with what was happening, mostly behind closed doors, in Madison.

The Conference Committee secret deal didn’t even have the benefit of full vetting by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau before members were forced to vote on it. Fiscal Bureau Director Bob Lang had to resort to augmenting his quick write up with a verbal briefing and best-guess snapshot of the fiscal bottom line.

Now that the awful Budget has passed and has been signed into law by Governor Doyle, the LFB has completed its analysis and we can see the full picture.

It isn’t pretty folks.

So, let’s do the math…

$3.63b increased spending
$2.05b increased taxes, fees, enhanced collections
$3.58b of borrowing
$1.50b allowable local property tax hike
+ $2.05b of a structural deficit
$12.81 billion worth of bad

Moreover, legislative leaders traded in their green eye shades for rose-colored glasses.

This budget is built on overly-optimistic predictions of economic growth in Wisconsin over the next two years.

Given that their economic forecasting has been as poor as their fiscal discipline, The MacIver Institute asks:

So, let’s do the math…

$3.685b increased spending

= $11.598 billion worth of bad.

Eleven point six billion dollars worth of bad in this secret deal. Now we know why the leaders of the Joint Finance Committee wanted to keep this secret for as long as possible.

As you read this, Democratic leaders in the Assembly are scrambling to get the 50 votes necessary to pass this secret budget deal. The Assembly has put off a vote on the Budget until at least Thursday afternoon/evening.

After Assembly action, the plan will go to the Senate for consideration there.

The current plan is certainly no slam dunk in that house, either.

Exhibit One: Does this blog post mean that Senator Vinehout won’t be voting yes on this version of the Budget?

I was told last week, I could ask for only one change to the budget deal. But people in Western Wisconsin need more than one thing. We need good roads, safe neighborhoods, thriving schools, a local pharmacy, local government services and lower property taxes.

One particularly interesting item:

The culture in Madison has to change and the only way this will happen is when individual senators and representatives insist they must be included; the voices of the people in their district must be heard. We must refuse to have our arms twisted by those who make the deals behind closed doors.

After finding the state $6.6 billion dollars in the hole, the first thing the Governor and the Democrats on Joint Finance did was not to cut spending but rather to dig the hole deeper by spending an additional $3.685 billion dollars. Once they figured out that this put them more than $10 billion in the hole, they decided to raise taxes and fees…. and to borrow …. and to push off paying the bills until the next budget.  The net result of all this hard work is that the State of Wisconsin will be worse off in the future.

But this devastation will only happen if leaders manage to get a majority in both houses to agree to what they’ve done. A handful of lawmakers cannot pass the budget on their own.

So, the horse trading/arm twisting continues outside of public view.

The longer this goes on, it looks like this current secret deal of a Budget will be replaced by a new secret Conference Committee deal cut by Senator Decker and Representative Pocan and voted on by the entire legislature in two or three weeks.

And at this point, unless there are significant changes which are discussed, debated and voted upon in the open, it is clear Senator Vinehout has to vote no on any and all of these secret deals–either that or face the prospect of being called out as a hypocrite back home.

Stay tuned…

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Contrary to the talking points they’ve been peddling, the Democrats’ actions made a bad budget even worse. The JFC proposes to spend nearly $3.7 billion more than the 2007-09 Budget and to do so will borrow even more than the Governor proposed in February.

Borrowing
Doyle’s proposed $2.713 billion in General Obligation and Revenue bonding, JFC upped the ante–their secret late night deal includes $3.31 billion in bonding.

Spending
The budget, as altered by the Joint Finance Committee, increases spending (all funds) by 6.3 percent ($3.685 billion) compared to the last State Budget. Total spending in this proposal now stands at $62.243 billion.

As for the efforts of the Joint Finance Committee:
For all their rhetoric about all the tough cuts they’ve made through their late-night secret deal making, state spending goes up nearly $3.7 billion under their plan.

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Today, the Wisconsin Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance will consider proposals that will gut the State’s Truth-in-Sentencing Law and will release prisoners before their sentences are completed.

This includes convicted drug dealers, arsonists and some sex offenders, among other felons.

From the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau analysis:

It should be noted that under the bill, while offenders subject to a special bulletin notice are ineligible for the sentence adjustments, other sex offenders would be eligible. During his budget testimony before the Joint Committee on Finance, however, the Secretary of the Department of Corrections indicated that the intent of the proposed language was to exclude all sex offenders who are required to register on the sex offender registry.

Oops.

In their zeal to gut a law that makes prisoners serve their full sentences, the Doyle Administration ‘accidentally’ included sex offenders in the list of those who get a break.

Others who are eligible for early release under this soft-on-crime provision includes arsonists, repeat drunk driver felons, cocaine dealers, kidnappers and dozens of other unsavory convicts who are hoping to use Wisconsin’s dire budget situation to catch a break.

One word comes to mind.

Priorities.

Here is the source document which includes the entire list of felons looking to the Doyle Administration to catch an early release: 275.pdf

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• The Governor introduced his Old Budget in Madison on February 17th in a televised statewide address before both houses of the State Legislature that lasted 33 minutes
• The Old Budget was 1,743 pages long
• The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee held six official public hearings around the state in Eau Claire, Sparta, Milwaukee, Racine, Appleton and Cambridge, at which members of the public testified on the Old Budget for a total of more than 45 hours
• The Committee also held one public ‘listening session’ in Ashland, that, although not a formal hearing, also provided an opportunity for the public to comment on the old plan
• Then, the Joint Finance Committee held seven public meetings in Madison, for a total of more than 22 hours and 40 minutes, during which the Committee was briefed by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau on specifics of certain areas of the Old Budget and wherein members took action in Executive Session voting to approve several items within the Old Budget
• Since the last Joint Finance Committee meeting in Madison on May 12, the Committee co-Chairmen have canceled or postponed action on the Old Budget several times
• Media reports indicate that instead of meeting in public, Governor Doyle, his staff, legislative leaders and the Joint Finance Committee co-Chairmen are meeting in private to craft a New Budget agreement to deal with Wisconsin’s fiscal condition, which suffers from a staggering $6.6 billion deficit
• Despite the fact that the public has been kept in the dark on the spending decisions and tax and fee increases that will be included in the New Budget proposal currently being hammered out in private, the co-Chairman of the Joint Finance Committee continues to tell the public he intends to have the New Budget voted out of his committee ‘by the end of May’
• The Old Budget proposed to increase spending by 10 percent and imposed nearly $2 Billion in new taxes and fees–no one knows what is in the New Budget
• No public speeches, public hearings, Legislative Fiscal Bureau briefings, or public listening sessions have been scheduled wherein the public can examine and comment upon the New Budget
• There are 11 days left until ‘the end of May’

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• The Governor introduced his Old Budget in Madison on February 17th in a televised statewide address before both houses of the State Legislature that lasted 33 minutes
• The Old Budget was 1,743 pages long
• The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee held six official public hearings around the state in Eau Claire, Sparta, Milwaukee, Racine, Appleton and Cambridge, at which members of the public testified on the Old Budget for a total of more than 45 hours
• The Committee also held one public ‘listening session’ in Ashland, that, although not a formal hearing, also provided an opportunity for the public to comment on the old plan
• Then, the Joint Finance Committee held seven public meetings in Madison, for a total of more than 22 hours and 40 minutes, during which the Committee was briefed by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau on specifics of certain areas of the Old Budget and wherein members took action in Executive Session voting to approve several items within the Old Budget
• Since the last Joint Finance Committee meeting in Madison on May 12, the Committee co-Chairmen have canceled or postponed action on the Old Budget several times
• Media reports indicate that instead of meeting in public, Governor Doyle, his staff, legislative leaders and the Joint Finance Committee co-Chairmen are meeting in private to craft a New Budget agreement to deal with Wisconsin’s fiscal condition, which suffers from a staggering $6.6 billion deficit
• Despite the fact that the public has been kept in the dark on the spending decisions and tax and fee increases that will be included in the New Budget proposal currently being hammered out in private, the co-Chairman of the Joint Finance Committee continues to tell the public he intends to have the New Budget voted out of his committee ‘by the end of May’
• The Old Budget proposed to increase spending by 10 percent and imposed nearly $2 Billion in new taxes and fees–no one knows what is in the New Budget
• No public speeches, public hearings, Legislative Fiscal Bureau briefings, or public listening sessions have been scheduled wherein the public can examine and comment upon the New Budget
• There are 11 days left until ‘the end of May’

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As you know, the State Budget is in the hole to the tune of perhaps six point five billion dollars.

New revenue estimates will be out soon that will attempt to nail down just how dire the situation is.

But that’s not stopping the Governor and some in the legislature from exacerbating the problem by moving to allow employees within the University of Wisconsin to collectively bargain, a move that puts taxpayers at increased risk for higher taxes and higher tuition in the future.

While small and large businesses alike are struggling to keep all costs DOWN in an effort to save not only jobs but entire companies, state government is considering proposals that will INCREASE labor costs.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, although represented faculty are located in a total of 31 states, a majority are located in the high-tax states of California, New Jersey, and New York.

Previous attempts to include this provision within the State Budget failed when, as has been routine, significant policy items were stripped during the legislature’s review of the Governor’s proposals.

While providing the authority to engage in collective bargaining, a move that would certainly lead to increased labor costs within the UW System, no funds were even allocated for the necessary state employees to participate in the negotiations. The Legislature anticipates it would cost the state more than $2 million a year just to establish the system–that’s before any new wage agreements are negotiated.

From the LFB:

These major additional responsibilities would have a fiscal effect for the UW System. However, the bill provides no funding or additional positions to the UW System for this purpose. In fiscal notes prepared for the 2007 session bills relating to UW collective bargaining (AB 726 and SB 353), UW System officials indicated that up to $2.2 million and 38.0 positions annually would be required for this work, assuming 30 separate collective bargaining units were organized. Although the need for positions and funding for this purpose was not discussed at the UW System’s budget briefing before the Committee, in recent material submitted by the UW System relating to the AB 75 provisions, officials now indicate that $2.2 million and 32.0 FTE positions annually may be required for this work. The estimate assumes six collective bargaining units (plus a statewide unit for academic staff supervisors, which the bill would also authorize). The $2.2 million would be compromised of approximately $1.5 million GPR and $0.7 million PR.

The Joint Finance Committee is expected to take up the UW Collective bargaining proposal tomorrow.

Source Document: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lfb/2009-11Budget/Budget%20Papers/607.pdf

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