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8/21/2009
The state budget: Those pesky details
A recent duo of newsletters from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance covers “overlooked details” in the 2009-11 state budget. Really good stuff to be filed away – perhaps for use when it comes time to reelect the legislators that voted for this stuff.
One of the writings defines earmarks for us – and then goes on to list those in the budget that legitimately qualify to wear the not-so-complimentary badge-of-pork.
The task of identifying earmarks in a budget brings to mind the words of Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it.” For example, the Institutes for Discovery at UW-Madison enjoys support from the UW Regents, the governor, and many legislative leaders as part of a state technology initiative. On the other hand, required funding of a new nursing building on the Madison campus had the characteristics of an earmark: site-specific, requested by a single lawmaker, without gubernatorial or university support, and after the budget was introduced by the governor. The rest of the newsletter lists those qualifying earmarks – without, by the way, any source of origin, as state statutes hold no one’s feet to any fire that would require disclosure of the requesting source. Imagine that.
WisTax reminds us that even though earmarks are a “fiscally questionable way to avoid the complete legislative process” and public scrutiny. But unlike Washington, “Wisconsin has a tool to stop earmarks: the governor’s power to veto individual budget items.”
Hmmm. Not much veto action this year, I’m afraid.
Read the second newsletter of the pair here, featuring contradictions, odd juxtapositions and such pesky little stuff as lots of new bonding and cuts that are undetermined and unlikely. This is just some of the excellent nonpartisan research the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance does - get yourself a subscription!
Jo Egelhoff, FoxPolitics.net
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