Main | Behind the Headlines: A Healthy Relationship with the Governor »
February 14, 2005
Budgets - There's Got to be a Better Way
In law school, I was taught to find things people could agree on and get them out of the way. That way, you don’t waste time wrangling over things about which you already have consensus and you can focus your time on the points of difference. I’ve found this a valuable philosophy in life and politics.
So on Friday, we put this to practice by passing a base budget bill – HB1. The base budget included funding for things like transportation, the weighted pupil unit (WPU) increase, Medicaid inflation, cost of living increases for state employees and corrections growth – all things we have to fund.
With those items off the table, we now realistically have an idea of how much money we have to work with for other programs and requests. Like with my personal budget, when I take my mortgage, utilities, car payment and food out of the available money column, I see what I can really spend on other things. The same is true for the state budget.
In addition to knowing better how much money we have on the table, we also have more time to deal with the remaining issues. Historically, the Legislature would wait until the last few days of the session to deal with any part of the budget. Sometimes in the rush mistakes would get made or people didn’t have enough time to digest all of the information in front of them. But now, by handling the budget in segments, we have already dealt with a large portion of the budget with weeks to go in the session. Plus, we have eliminated much of the last minute rush and can spend time resolving our differences to achieve the best budget possible.
Greg Curtis
Posted by majority at February 14, 2005 11:57 AM
Comments
Congratulations on the new blog and also on the new strategy for dealing with the budget. I think its a good plan.
Posted by: Phil Windley at February 14, 2005 02:25 PM