State Senate OKs final budget agreement; Assembly vote on tap

Published: June 25, 2009
Tags: Assembly, budget, Senate

Paul Snyder
paul.snyder@dailyreporter.com

The state Senate approved a special Legislative committee’s agreement reached on the 2009-11 state budget early Friday morning on a 17-15 vote.

Sen. Alan Lasee, R-De Pere, was absent from the vote. Sen. Jim Sullivan, D-Wauwatosa, voted against the agreement.

The specially formed conference committee, which was designed to strike a compromise between the Senate and Assembly versions of the state budget, took more than 12 hours to find common ground on the spending plan Thursday. Democrats spent the day trying to reach agreement on the more than 189 differences between the Senate and Assembly.

The Assembly has a rule that it cannot vote on a bill sooner than 24 hours after introduction, so the earliest the Assembly could vote would be Friday night.

Among the major changes are:

A complete deletion of the oil-franchise fee. Although the Senate deleted that provision, it recommended moving $260.1 million from the state’s general budget to the transportation budget. The conference committee agreement instead directs smaller sources of revenue, such as $27.8 million from the petroleum inspection budget, to the transportation budget. The committee also deleted a provision from the Joint Committee on Finance budget that would have moved $139.7 million from transportation to the general budget.

A prohibition on counties performing construction work, including roadwork, on a project using private money.

Deletion of the Assembly’s creation of a Fox Valley regional transit authority.

A provision that only 25 percent of money generated from a half-cent sales tax increase for the Dane County RTA be used for road projects.

A deletion of $28.1 million for the nursing school building project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Instead the committee chose to put about $3 million toward advance planning for the project to go in the 2011-13 budget.

A deletion of the $10 million in bonding for the engineering building project at Marquette University.

The conference committee preserved several definition changes the state Senate made to prevailing wage laws to more clearly define municipal, state or public involvement.

The committee also preserved contractor registration rules and increased tipping fees for owners of construction landfills.

Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, offered motions to remove nonfiscal policy items, earmarks and all language relating to prevailing wage law changes from the budget. Each motion failed on a 4-2 vote.

Fitzgerald derided the process by which the committee came to agreement, saying it completely circumvented the opportunity for public discourse. He called this year’s entire budget process the worst he has ever seen.

Bob Lang, director of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, said the agreed-upon state budget would increase state spending by $4 billion, which Assembly Minority Leader Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said would punish taxpayers struggling to put together a family budget.

But Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Schofield, defended the agreement and pointed out it limits cuts to shared revenue and increases money for road projects throughout the state.

The conference committee’s agreements can be viewed here.

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