Budget Action Could Come This Week

Thursday, September 27, 2007 4:44 PM CDT

Joan Sanstadt, News Editor

Lawmakers on the Conference Committee are meeting again this week n only the location of those meetings has been changed. This time around, instead of meeting in the Capitol building, the meetings will take place in the Executive Mansion and the governor will be present.

Governor Jim Doyle announced the sessions on Friday after Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson (D-Beloit), said they would drop their Healthy Wisconsin Plan from the budget and introduce it as a separate bill.

(Incidentally Democratic Doyle had never endorsed the Healthy Wisconsin plan, preferring instead the plan he had offered in his budget address that would increase the number of persons covered by health insurance.)

Earlier in the week Republicans, led by Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem), passed separate spending bills to provide funding for schools and local governments. That measure drew bipartisan support with 20 Democrats voting for the measure. (More details in another segment of this column.)

Doyle rejected the idea of separate funding proposals saying he wanted the budget acted as one measure.

Democrats want Republicans to accept their proposals for tax increases on cigarettes, nursing homes and hospitals in exchange for dropping Healthy Wisconsin. They also favor a new tax on oil companies, as proposed by the governor in his budget.

Huebsch has promised that there will be a public hearing by an Assembly committee on Healthy Wisconsin, if it is introduced separately.

Can’t help but wonder if it was the more than 150 protestors gathered on the Capitol steps last week banging out their frustrations over lack of a budget on kitchen cooking utensils that finally got the attention of legislators and the governor.

Maybe it was embarrassment because Wisconsin is the only state, with a June 30 budget deadline, that remains without that important spending plan.

As of Monday, it doesn’t appear Doyle has imposed additional deadlines on the legislators to agree on a budget proposal (he had indicated he wanted it done by the end of the month). But he did note the executive mansion had “some extra bedrooms.”

It’s tempting to offer the governor a word of caution n something about being careful what you ask for.

It’s not over

Just in case anyone has forgotten details of the budget process, agreement on a budget document by the eight-member Conference Committee, doesn’t mean it’s over.

Each house must approve the budget version approved by the committee (or agree on any changes).

Then the budget goes to the governor.

No one should forget this governor still has the most powerful veto pen of any governor in the country. There is a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit those powers, but that measure still requires Senate approval before it can go before voters in a statewide referendum vote.

So at least for this budget, no restrictions have been placed on the governor’s veto powers.

But it makes one wonder, after this year’s lengthy debate over the budget, if the governor might not feel it would be a good idea to use few fewer vetoes than he did the last time around.

Earlier Assembly action

Probably no one in the legislature recognizes the need for local governments to know their state aid numbers better than Rep. Lee Nerison (R-Westby). He supported the Assembly bills that sought to let schools and local governments know how much state money they could count on n before they had to set their own budgets.

Before coming to the Assembly Nerison served eight years on the Vernon County Board, four of those years as chair.

Here’s what he had to say in a news release last week:

“An eight-member conference committee has been meeting since July 25 to develop a compromise version of the 2007-09 state budget since the State Assembly and the State Senate passed significantly different versions of the budget bill.

“While there are many issues left for the committee to resolve, the Assembly tried to break through this stalemate by voting for bills to fund K-12 education and shared revenue to head off a $600 million increase in property taxes.

“Last week, the State Assembly passed Assembly Bill 506 to fund K-12 education on a bipartisan, 70-27 vote.  According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, this bill provides $12.3 billion dollars for K-12 education, the highest level in state history, over the next two years. For rural schools, the bill increases the per pupil reimbursement rate from the current $180 to $220 for districts that transport students over 12 miles. Funding for school breakfast programs would also increase by $3.2 million under this proposal.

“Assembly Bill 507, which would maintain the current levy limits on counties and municipalities, also passed the State Assembly last week on a bipartisan, 52-45 vote. Under this proposal, municipalities would receive $854.7 million in state aid in each of the next two years, the same level of aid provided in calendar year 2007. It would allow local levies to increase by either two percent or the amount of growth in new construction. The bill also allows a city, village, town, or county to increase its levy limit through a referendum process.

“It was necessary to pass these two bills because schools and local governments need to know how much state aid they will receive in order to set their budgets as they face looming deadlines. We can’t allow the budget impasse to hold up state aid to school districts and local governments. Even though we are sill operating under our previous budget, the reality is that without a new state budget, school districts and municipalities will have no choice but to raise property taxes to make up for the state aid they expected to receive.

“According to our accountants at the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, we saved taxpayers from getting an increase of about $200 on their property tax bill by passing this legislation,” Nerison said.

Counts don’t match

State Rep. Suzanne Jeskewitz (R-Menomonee Falls), co-chair of the Legislative Audit Committee, isn’t happy with results of the Legislative Audit Bureau’s (LAB) biennial review of the State Division on Gaming.

In its biennial review of that division the LAB determined that at least once each day during 2006 electronic counts of coins collected from slot machines did not match separate hand counts.

The audit also determined that from March 2006 until April 2007, there had been no state review of casino data to find out if tribes had investigated and kept track of the differences found in the two different methods of counting.

Like so many other stances we’re all too familiar with, the state gaming director said a “computer glitch” was to blame. He said other methods were used to ensure the casinos made correct payments to the state. However those “other” counts were hand-counts made by casino employees.

The audit also found that revenue from tribal gaming had increased from $1 billion in 2002 to $1.3 billion in 2005-06. This was due to revised gaming compacts between tribes and the state.

Two tribes n the Lac du Flambeau and the Ho-Chunk n are in either negotiation or litigation with the state over payments owed to the state.

Grant to rural hospitals

A $1.6 million grant from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration has been awarded to the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative (RWHC) and the Wisconsin Association of Rural Health to help develop a shared hospital information system for computers and software in order to have access to a higher quality system and save a significant amount of money.

The grant will help launch the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative Information Technology Network, a non-profit cooperative owned by participating non-profit hospitals set up to serve rural hospitals and physicians.

It will provide:

- Unified, integrated electronic information to support health care

- Systems to reduce avoidable medication errors

- Robust and affordable electronic health record applications and quality support to ensure its appropriate use.

Tim Size, executive director of RWHC said the federal grant “will go a long way to help achieve our vision to create an affordable, high quality information network for rural Wisconsin hospitals and their patients.”

First to sign on to the network were St. Joseph’s Health Services in Hillsboro, Tomah Memorial Hospital and Memorial Hospital of Lafayette County in Darlington. Participation is open to all rural hospitals.

Capitol Notes:

- Last week brown trout from the DNR’s fish hatchery at Wild Rose were released into Lake Michigan and its tributaries. The fish had been cleared for stocking purposes after it was determined no DNR-raised fish tested positive for VHS (viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a disease that causes fish to bleed to death). VHS is not a threat to human health, officials say.

- Two lawmakers, Reps. Frank Boyle (D-Superior) and Mark Pocan (D-Madison) have introduced a measure that would allow patients with debilitating medical conditions access to marijuana. The legislation is similar to laws already in place in 12 other states.

- Milwaukee will host the 2008 Midwest U.S. Japan Conference on Sept. 7-9. This conference brings together international business leaders from Japan and the U.S. and serves as the principal forum for bilateral trade and investment discussion between the Midwest and Japan.

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