Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
Disappointing is the best way to describe state legislators’ special session efforts to pass a budget bill.
The only thing Hoosiers are asking of their elected leaders is to pass a reasonable spending plan before June 30. Republicans and Democrats are not working together, and the results will be disastrous if this nonsense continues.
Gov. Mitch Daniels’ budget proposal was far from ideal. Most egregious is his suggested school funding plan that would result in some wealthy school districts getting generous increases while dollars for poorer urban and rural districts are cut.
Unwisely, House Democrats decided to start the process basically from scratch. Caucus members tossed in a smattering of amendments to House Bill 1001 that added millions of dollars in spending to the budget bill, including:
•Increasing spending for homeownership education from $400,000 to $2.7 million.
•Appropriating $17.5 million for the Indiana University East Wellness Center in Richmond.
•Requiring the Bureau of Motor Vehicles department to create an Earlham College Trust license plate.
•Using $3 million from the tobacco settlement fund for a trauma care hospital in Gary.
Not surprisingly, the one-year budget – another point of contention – passed out of the House on Thursday along party lines.
Meanwhile, there is one provision to the bill that should be added: an audit of Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration’s modernization project.
This page has advocated that the legislature make the budget its singular priority. But the proposed FSSA audit fits well within the scope of the budget. The General Assembly failed in the regular session to satisfactorily address the problems with the modernization project. Adding the audit into the budget would be a good fix.
Rep. Gail Riecken pulled her proposed legislation, H.B. 1003, for an independent audit of the disparaged program on Wednesday. But after the budget vote, Riecken made a comment that she would, with Rep. Pat Bauer’s support, seek to get the audit language into the final budget bill.
“FSSA privatization is broken. I would call it a dismal failure,” she said.
The odds of getting the FSSA audit into the budget bill aren’t great. An amendment adding the audit to the budget would need to pass in the Republican-dominated Senate. Even Republicans critical of FSSA’s modernization, including Rep. Suzanne Crouch of Evansville, voted against the bill because of the $300,000 price tag for the audit that would come from tax dollars.
The best chance for getting the audit into the budget is during conference committee negotiations at the end of the special session. State legislators have yet to display the spirit of cooperation needed to get that done.
It is one addition to the budget that Democrats would be right to demand.
