On the clock
INDIANAPOLIS – The legislature will be back in session to continue the process of drafting a state budget on Thursday afternoon. However, despite efforts made by leaders to create a committee that would construct ideas and compromises, the General Assembly will come into session with no clear bipartisan deal to work from.
Some are more worried about this than others.
Rep. Jeff Espich, a member of the Special Joint Budget Committee and the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, R-Uniondale, said he is not optimistic in the slightest about the coming days because he has not yet seen compromise.
He said the Democrats’ walk-out along with their new budget proposal has “destroyed any opportunity to reach a quick agreement.”
“I am very fearful that we could be talking about a special, special session even after the first of the fiscal year,” he said.
Sen. Vi Simpson, Senate minority leader, D-Bloomington, said she is optimistic even though she recognizes the challenges ahead.
“There are still a lot of things that have to be worked out, so I really don’t know how long it’s going to take,” she said. “But we’re all going to be there, and we’re all going to be working hard to get it done in time.”
The intent of the Special Joint Budget Committee was to get a bipartisan group of legislators together to compromise and come up with ideas that the General Assembly could work with during the session. However, the Democrats’ revolt was sparked by the governor’s education funding formula.
Simpson said she does not support the governor’s formula because it gives an unfair advantage to growing school corporations through the idea of dollars following the child.
“The governor’s proposal, although he advertised it as 2 percent was actually only a .2 percent increase for our schools, and so it was a bit deceiving,” Simpson said.
State Budget Director Chris Ruhl, however, said he believes they were open and transparent, never intertwining federal money into the formula. He said there was nothing different with this formula than what the House or Senate came up with previously.
“So essentially all we did was say those [stimulus] dollars are coming to schools on top of whatever the state school funding formula produces, and the schools are going to get that money over the next two years, so you might as well count it in terms of dollars they can spend,” Ruhl said.
The Ways and Means Committee produced guiding principles for their budget during their Wednesday meeting, calling for a 2 percent education increase – not including federal dollars.
Though she is critical of the governor’s formula, Simpson also said she doesn’t think it is as easy as what the Ways and Means Committee proposed. Ruhl agrees, pointing out that while he was glad Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, consented to the governor’s budget parameters, he was discouraged by the outline of a budget with “pages and pages and pages of more spending” and no information on where additional cuts would come from.
“I think that we have to come up with a balanced budget,” Simpson said, “and my intent is to support or to put forward some options for a school funding formula in the Senate version that will address all the needs and still have some increase for public schools.”
Espich said he does support money going to the students, which means less money going to corporations where there are fewer students. Taking that into account, he said that the Ways and Means Committee education funding formula is “not realistic” because it does not consider the new economic forecast.
With the end of the fiscal year approaching and many philosophical differences between the legislators, Espich and Simpson agree that the legislature will need time to sort this out. Recognizing constituent frustration, Espich promises to overcome the financial obstacles to do what’s best for the taxpayers.
“State government is facing the same kind of problems that people are facing – lost jobs, less income, business’ failures. So, the public has heard our insistence that there’ll be no tax increases, and we’re going to live by that, and we’re going to live within our income,” Espich said. “We have a responsibility to pass a budget and frankly, shutting down our state government is a frightening prospect.”
