While budget committee nears end of work, real fight awaits
(Published Tuesday, June 5, 2007 10:41:41 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Scott Bauer Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. - Property taxes most likely will go up, and it will cost more to get a driver's license and register your car and boat.
But getting a copy of your birth certificate will be the same, and more schools may have security guards on duty.
And if Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle continues to get his way, the University of Wisconsin will get more money, more children will get health insurance, and smokers will pay more to light up.
But just because the $58 billion budget set to clear the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee this week looks remarkably similar to what Doyle proposed in February doesn't mean it's going to stay that way.
If anything, the real fight over how much taxes will go up - and who's paying them - lays ahead.
"For all the commitment that they were going to work together, it's still extremely partisan," said Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist and former Democratic lawmaker. "It's hard to tell if the culture has really changed between the last Legislature and this one."
The Joint Finance Committee failed to compromise on even mildly controversial issues, leaving Doyle's original proposal mostly in place, said Todd Berry, president of Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a nonpartisan research group. That means the versions coming out of the Republican-controlled Assembly and Democratic-led Senate are likely to be very different and require some hard negotiations in conference committee.
"I would be surprised if there was a budget that was in place before Labor Day," Berry said. "I would say that the decisions made by the finance committee on minor and non-controversial items probably means they're settled. That's good because it narrows the points of difference. The problem is most of the big issues aren't being settled."
The committee is scheduled to take up some of those divisive issues - including how much money to give the University of Wisconsin and whether to tax smokers more - this week as it wraps up its work on the 1,757-page budget.
It's also expected to look at providing health insurance coverage to all children in the state regardless of income, whether to pay for lifetime GPS tracking of sex offenders and earmarking tobacco settlement money for smoking-related health costs and anti-tobacco programs.
Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, has vowed not to pass a budget that has any tax increases in it. Assuming that the Democratic-controlled Senate approves a plan similar to Doyle's, a conference committee made up of Republican and Democratic lawmakers from both houses will have to work out the differences.
The committee's make up has not yet been determined, but Berry said it is likely to bring together legislative leaders with very different priorities related to taxes and health care.
"I don't know why that should lead to a quick solution," he said.
Unless party leadership in one of the houses is able to broker a great compromise, Lee said he would cynically suggest going straight to conference committee and bypassing debate in the Senate and Assembly.
Doyle said last month that he hoped the budget could be done by mid-July. The current budget expires at the end of this month, but if a new budget isn't signed into law by then existing one remains in effect.
And if Doyle doesn't like what the conference committee comes up with, he can use his powerful veto authority to make changes to bring it back in line with his original plan.
