Assembly “Technical Amendment” Adds More Policy to Budget

Dems Decide Not to Submit Their Amendments

The Wisconsin Assembly approved the Joint Finance Committee’s version of the state budget today with one “technical amendment.” That amendment includes 27 different items, most of which are anything but technical.

At least two of the measures in the amendment (Assembly Amendment 3 to the JFC substitute amendment) are new non-fiscal policy items (and many others amend non-fiscal policy measures in the bill). One of the new ones precludes local governments in Wisconsin from adopting or enforcing ordinances or resolutions that regulate or impose any fees on real estate brokers. Another new non-fiscal policy measure provides an additional method for chiropractors to be approved for a license.

One of the items (#26 in the Legislative Fiscal Bureau summary) is labeled “LFB/LRB technical corrections.”  That particular part of the amendment does exactly what a “technical amendment” is supposed to do – it makes corrections that bring the amended bill into alignment with what legislators thought they had previously approved. But when it comes to the substantive changes in the other 26 portions of the amendment, to refer to them as “technical” is an Orwellian way of describing the product of many hours of behind-the-scenes negotiations. (Technical amendments don’t need to be negotiated privately and don’t require an 8-page summary.)

In essence, calling Assembly Amendment 3 a “technical” amendment was one of the ways to convey the message that the majority party wouldn’t allow any “substantive” amendments to pass; only the “technical” amendment would be approved. It’s often the case that the only budget amendments that pass are one or two developed by the majority leaders or caucus, but I can’t remember any other budgets where the majority party was so overtly insistent upon the notion that the floor debate would have no effect on the outcome. The GOP leaders have essentially been saying that the behind-the-scenes deals – which went into crafting both the “technical” amendment and the omnibus motion approved by the budget committee during the middle of the night – would be the last word in both houses regarding the substance of the budget bill.

Despite the fact that majority party leaders made it clear that no “substantive” amendments would pass, I was very surprised that Democrats in the Assembly decided to vote on final passage of the bill without offering the 200 or so amendments they had prepared.  Usually the minority party likes to offer and vote on scads of amendments, partly because it’s the only role that most of those legislators have in the budget process, and partly because they generally like to get lots of roll call votes to use during campaign season.

The flip side of the practice of getting roll call votes on amendments is that some of those votes might be problematic for certain members of the minority party. And perhaps more importantly, roll calls on some of the Democrats' amendments could be useful for Republicans in swing districts who are allowed to vote for those amendments. When the majority party has a very comfortable margin, it can defeat all amendments but give a free pass to some of its members who represent more centrist districts and might want to be able to provide hard evidence that they didn’t like some parts of the bill.  I suspect that was a significant factor in the decision of the Democrats to essentially have just one “up or down” vote on the bill.

I think the process will be considerably different in Senate on Thursday, and I hope there is a robust debate on the budget in that house.

Jon Peacock

Is This a “Robin Hood in Reverse” Budget?

Legislature’s Response This Week to New Data on W-2 Growth May Answer that Question

I’ve said on a few occasions that the fiscal plan being considered in the legislature this week is a “Robin Hood in Reverse” budget.  Just how true that is will be decided this week, as legislators debate the budget bill and consider new figures that contradict a key assumption underlying the bill’s diversion of funding intended to serve low-income families.

As someone who prefers objective statements of fact to subjective sound bites, I’ve been hesitant to broadly and loudly declare that this is a “Robin Hood in Reverse” budget – at least until we have very solid data backing that conclusion. A key piece of that data can now be found on the Department of Children and Families (DCF) website, because the new Wisconsin Works (W-2) statistics contradict the budget bill’s assumption about declining participation in that program. That assumption has been used to justify cutting W-2 spending and siphoning off the savings to use for other purposes, such as the proposed income tax cut.

New Hampshire Court Strikes Down Tax Credits for Religious Schools

A New Hampshire Court ruling issued Monday struck down as unconstitutional the provisions of the state’s voucher tax credit law that fund religious schools. The decision by the Strafford County Superior Court declared that those portions of the program will have to be halted immediately. However, the tax credit/voucher program will still be able to provide funding to secular private schools, out-of-district public schools and home schools.

The court ruling, which can be found here, is based on Article 83 of the New Hampshire Constitution, which states that "no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination." The law that it partially invalidates was passed in 2012 by a Republican-led Legislature over the veto of Democratic Gov. John Lynch.

Ten Worst Changes in the Budget for Children and Families

Department of Children and Families budget 

• Siphoning off federal funds for low-income families – The budget transfers almost $19 million per year more to the Dept. of Revenue from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant, to supplant state funding for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This siphons off funding intended for low-income families – ostensibly to strengthen the EITC, but the bill actually reduces total state and federal spending for that credit by $14 million over the next two years.
• Early education – The bill reduces funding for Wisconsin Shares child care subsidies by $35 million, based on lower cost projections, and squanders the opportunity to use those savings to increase reimbursement rates and improve child care quality.
• Wisconsin Works (W-2) – It cuts the W-2 appropriation by $13.4 million over the next two years, which is premised upon very unrealistic assumptions about declining participation. The Finance Committee assumed that participation would fall by 1% per month, starting in April, but it actually climbed by 4% in April.

Health Care

• Restricting BadgerCare for parents – Beginning in 2014, the bill ends BadgerCare coverage for nearly 90,000 parents, which will be an economic hardship for many families as some of those parents move into private coverage with much higher cost-sharing, and as some of those parents become uninsured. An alternative plan, which would cover 85,000 more adults in BadgerCare than the Governor’s plan, would actually save state taxpayers $149 million in the 2013-15 biennium.
• BadgerCare for children – The budget bill seeks to resurrect changes DHS proposed in 2011, which could cause 29,000 children to lose BadgerCare coverage if federal officials allow those changes to be implemented.

K-12 education

• Inadequate increase in school aid – After deep cuts for schools in the last budget, the state is using its improved fiscal situation to only increase school aid by 1.5% in 2013-14 and 2.8% in 2014-15. Those modest increases mean that schools are going to continue to lose ground to inflation.
• Vouchers –The budget expands the school voucher program statewide, which is likely to divert a steadily growing share of the funding desperately needed for public schools.

Juvenile justice

• Increase in secure detention – A late, undebated amendment lengthens from 180 days to 365 days the maximum length for placing juveniles in secure detention in local facilities – many of which are ill-equipped for lengthy stays – without any minimum quality standards.

Department of Workforce Development

• Unemployment insurance (UI) – Contrary to the recommendations of the Unemployment Insurance Advisory Council, the bill includes policy changes that will make it more difficult for some parents and their families to receive UI benefits.

Starting the next budget in a hole

• Because much of the income tax cut in the bill is funded with one-time revenue, it is expected to cause a $505 million hole in the 2015-17 budget. That will continue to put downward pressure on spending because the first half billion dollars of revenue growth will have to be used to close that hole, before addressing any increases in costs from inflation, population growth, or other spending needs.

Jon Peacock

Arizona Passes Medicaid Expansion – in a Victory for Gov. Brewer and Common Sense

The Arizona Senate voted 18-11 Thursday afternoon to use enhanced federal Medicaid financing provided by the Affordable Care Act to substantially improve access to Medicaid. The vote was closer in the Arizona House, which approved the special session bill earlier in the day by a vote of 33-27.

Governor Jan Brewer, a conservative Republican, decided several months ago that taking the federal money to improve access to insurance coverage and reduce uncompensated care was simply too good a deal to pass up. Despite strong opposition from Tea Party Republicans in the House, Brewer was able to convince moderate Republicans to vote for the bill.

Budget’s Non-fiscal Policy Explosion Cataloged by Fiscal Bureau

Finance Committee Approves 35 of Governor’s Non-fiscal Proposals and Adds 59 More

A document released Tuesday by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) provides a comprehensive list of non-fiscal policy measures included in the biennial budget bill. Legislators frequently condemn the practice of putting non-fiscal policy into this bill because the budget process generally provides much less opportunity for careful review and debate than the normal legislative process. Nevertheless, they sometimes succumb to the desire to use the budget as an easy way to pass things, including policy measures that probably couldn’t survive more thorough public scrutiny and more robust debate.

The volume of inappropriate policy items seems to have exploded in this budget. The Governor proposed 58 items that the LFB categorized as non-fiscal policy, and the Joint Finance Committee removed only 23 of those. The LFB memo shows that the committee subsequently added 59 more, bringing the total now in the bill to 94.

Decline in Use of Juvenile Detention Levels Off

After steady and significant declines in the use of juvenile detention across Wisconsin, over the past four years we have seen a leveling off in the number of youth held on an average day around the state in our detention centers.  The overall number of admissions declined some in 2012, but the average number on a given day has remained relatively steady (around 215) for 2009 through 2012.

This and other data is illustrated in the Detention Data Report 2012 just posted on the WCCF website. Things that are worthy of note include: (1) only about one in four youth admitted to detention have a crime against person as the underlying charge; (2) fifty-seven percent of youth admitted are non-white; (3) age and gender of admissions has remained steady; and (4) sixteen of the eighteen centers averaged less than 50% of capacity over the year.

Wisconsin has come a long way in reducing both short and long term confinement of youth, but the work is never done. There is more that can be done to ensure that we only confine those youth who really need to be detained to protect the public or ensure they appear in court.  And, whether the admissions numbers portend a leveling off of other juvenile justice data, such as arrests, petitions, corrections placements, etc. only time will tell.    by Jim Moeser