Evansville Courier & Press
Each time the Indiana Legislature finds itself boxed into one of these costly special sessions, we end up asking ourselves the same question - why?
Lawmakers knew in January when they went into the regular session that they would have to approve a new budget. They knew state revenues were in decline. They knew that without agreement they would risk shutting down the state, putting thousands of employees out of work and closing down essential services. And they knew that they had only so much money to work with.
With those unavoidable parameters, four months seemed an adequate amount of time to complete the job. Yet, here they are, six months into the year, just finishing the job.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels guessed that the extra cost of the special session was probably $150,000. Heck, that's half of what State Rep. Dennis Avery wanted for a study of rail transportation between Evansville and Chicago, a proposal that in the end was cut from the finally approved $27.8 million, two-year budget.
And yet, with that all understood, we must say that the differences between Republicans and Democrats this year seemed to be philosophically valid.
Most special session years, we could not say that. This year, at least, the differences were clear cut.
Republicans, led by Gov. Mitch Daniels, were determined to protect most of the state surplus in hopes of avoiding further financial crises next year and the year after. In the end, Daniels was able to save $1 billion of the $1.3 billion surplus, and possibly help the state avoid a future tax increase.
That decision, and the very fact that Indiana has any surplus at all, put the state in a far better position than other cash-strapped neighboring states.
On the other side, Democrats, led by House Speaker Patrick Bauer of South Bend, wanted more money for education, including urban schools with declining enrollment.
That school spending formula was one of the key differences. Democrats wanted all Indiana public school districts to receive more money in the new budget than in the last.
In fact, in the end, Democrats picked up an additional $54 million in the final negotiations.
Republicans agreed to more money in total, but wanted it distributed on a per pupil basis. That means that schools with growing enrollments, such as those found mainly in the suburbs, would receive more state funding than urban schools with declining enrollments.
The latter makes sense. More students should require more assistance.
In a perfect place, all schools would receive increased funding. But today's weak economy has placed Indiana, its communities and its taxpayers in a tough place where challenging decisions must be made.
One of the toughest nuts for the legislature to crack - and one of the reasons cited for a special session - was the troublesome Indianapolis Capital Improvement Board, which runs the city's professional sports facilities, and which has a $47 million deficit. The state has an interest in keeping these sports venues on sound footing, but individual lawmakers, especially those far removed from Indianapolis, see it as not their problem. They believe it is an issue that Indianapolis should deal with. However, in the end, the legislature, as a part of final negotiations, came to its assistance in the form of $8 million annually from the state sales tax.
State Rep. Trent VanHaaften, D-Mount Vernon, was upset, pointing out that three Posey County school districts stand to lose about $1 million over the biennium as a result of the spending formula.
"People in my community will not understand that, but I'm going to make sure they know that we were held hostage," he said.
Not everyone likes the final budget result, and it could have been better, but at the least, now the state has a fighting chance of financial recovery in the coming years.
Those tough decisions relate not only to fiscal reality but to political reality. Lawmakers did not really want to go home and tell their constituents that they were responsible for shutting down the license branch or the state park or for putting state employees on unpaid furlough.
Unfortunately, it took until Tuesday, only hours before the clock struck midnight, for that to happen. Given the known limitations on spending, that was entirely too long.