Wisconsin Budget: An Opportunity to End Partisanship 'Gotcha'

Friday on WHA radio The Week In Review, when Joy Cardin asked me if the cuts made in the budget of the Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen office were partisan, I promptly answered  "Yes."

Nothing is new; this is a decades-old flawed bipartisan Wisconsin tradition.

I recall years ago when a member of the majority party decided to punish a member of the opposing party. The majority legislator struck from the budget a small needed facility in the offender's district. The cost was so insignificant, it could not be measured in the hundredths of a percentage point.

The only people hurt were the residents of the area. They were the real victims. For decades feuds between legislators lead to the people of the state used as pawns in a 'gotcha" game. What is happening to Republican Van Hollen and his department happened to Democrats when Doyle was AG, and happened to various State Treasurers and Secretaries of State who were of the wrong political persuasion.

It is time for both parties to end this silliness.  Restoring the cuts in the Attorney General's budget is a place to start.  I was not a supporter of J. B. Van Hollen and some of his work clearly distresses me. Cutting the budget may hurt him, but the real victims are the people of the state.

While we are on the subject, both parties should confront bipartisan budget practices that hurt all of us. It is time to accurately project tax revenues, stop using one-time revenues to fund the operating budget, and stop shifting operating budget items to the capital budget so they can be funded by borrowing instead of current tax revenues.

In addition we need creative approaches to expensive problems.

A bipartisan effort to look at means of lowering the costs of incarceration is a place to start. Van Hollen and Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney know where to start: for nonviolent offenders, further expansion of early release bracelet programs and other initiatives which do not endanger public safety.

Comments

[R.J.]

Most Republicans feel Van Hollen has gone "native" in Madison...the John McCain of AG's. This capricious cut just shows the futility of appeasement.
It also highlights the 'pro-criminal' leaning of the senate by the carefree addition of 49 state public defenders.
http://wislawjournal.com/article.cfm/2009/06/01/Finance-committee-supports-SPD-changes

[The Sconz]

And how about stop the corrupt practice of holding fundraisers while the budget is being written:
http://thesconz.wordpress.com/2009/06/06/corrupted-by-power-the-democratic-party-of-wisconsin/

[xoff]

From WisPolitics…

The state Department of Justice faces a much smaller cut in GPR and all funds than the $17 million Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen publicized last week in criticizing the JFC budget, according to the Fiscal Bureau summary released today.

….According to LFB, the JFC budget would cut the agency $7 million in GPR compared to the base year doubled, a reduction of 8.3 percent. The reduction in all funds would be almost $3.9 million, equal to a 2.1 percent cut. …

JFC Co-Chair Mark Pocan, D-Madison, countered the LFB numbers back up the Dems’ contention that the AG is has been misleading the public.

“I can pretty much tell the attorney general wasn’t a math major,” Pocan said. “We’ve been saying this since day one. The cuts he’s been coming up with don’t match what’s in the budget or what’s in reality.”

Pocan said Van Hollen totaled up all the cuts JFC approved without taking into account the new money pumped into the agency.
See the LFB summary: http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lfb/2009-11Budget/JFC/doj.pdf