Storm clouds form around rainy day budget

Published: May 18, 2010
Tags: constitutional amendment, Klipstien, Mark Gottlieb, rainy day budget, State Engineering Association, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Assembly, Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Wisconsin Joint Committee on Finance, WisDOT

By Paul Snyder

An amendment to the state’s constitution that would create a rainy day budget and keep Wisconsin’s employees at work is drawing support from people dealing with furloughs.

“We were laid off nine days in the last fiscal year, and we’re going to be laid off nine more in the next fiscal year,” said Mark Klipstein, a project manager with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and president of the State Engineering Association. “We see ourselves being used as pawns in a political game to save money while the state spends more money outsourcing its employees’ jobs.”

Lawmakers dealing with the last budget, primarily its $6.6 billion deficit, struggled at every turn, said state Rep. Mark Gottlieb, R-Port Washington. To try to prevent that from recurring, Gottlieb on Tuesday proposed a constitutional amendment that would create and protect a rainy day budget.

According to the amendment, the state would set aside excess tax revenue from its general budget if the revenue exceeds 6.5 percent of statewide personal income, which is calculated by the federal government. In years when revenue does not exceed 6.5 percent, the state would deposit 0.5 percent of its tax revenue into the rainy day budget, according to the amendment.

The amendment would mandate a $130 million minimum for the budget.

Gottlieb said he wants to prevent lawmakers from increasing taxes or cutting programs to get out of deficits. Instead, he said, the state can tap the money in the rainy day budget.

It’s a good idea, said state Rep. Pedro Colon, D-Milwaukee, a member of the state’s Joint Committee on Finance. But he said he will not support it.

“I wouldn’t want to do it under the muscle of a constitutional amendment,” he said. “Those guys like to talk about likening it to family budgets, but what do you do when the family budget gets tight? You get creative.

“When the hard times come, we need the flexibility to work through them.”

To pass a constitutional amendment, a proposal must pass two consecutive legislative sessions and gain voter approval in a referendum. Gottlieb said the earliest the amendment could take effect is 2013, meaning more tough budgets are ahead.

But if the amendment passes, he said, those problems disappear.

“It puts us on a different track fiscally,” he said, “where we are not careening from crisis to crisis in state budgets.”

Colon said it’s not the right time or place to talk about setting money aside.

“It’s a discussion to have at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,” he said. “But the fact is we get paid to govern across the street where the rubber meets the road. We have a responsibility to keep projects going and do things that put people back to work.”

Furloughs and layoffs are not the way to get that done, Klipstein said.

“If this bill prevents the misuse of state money and tries to make the state be more cost effective,” he said, “I think it could be a benefit to us.”

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