INDIANAPOLIS - Heated exchanges between House Democrats and two top deputies of Gov. Mitch Daniels marked a meeting of the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday as state lawmakers began crafting the state budget.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, and his vice chairman, Rep. Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, repeatedly clashed with State Budget Director Chris Ruhl and Ryan Kitchell, Daniels' director of the Office of Management and Budget, who introduced the governor's proposed budget.
The early back-and-forth points to what may be an especially contentious process as the Democratic-controlled House, Republican-controlled Senate and Republican governor work to craft the state's biennial budget in the face of sharply declining revenues.
To get the state through the next two fiscal years without running a deficit, the Daniels administration is proposing a $28.3 billion budget that cuts most state agencies' budgets by 8 percent, higher education by 4 percent and eliminates some programs completely. Daniels has said maintaining current K-12 education spending levels and boosting public safety are among his top priorities. Meanwhile, he opposes dipping into the states $1.3 billion in reserves.
Included in the proposed budget is a moratorium on most capital spending projects, with the exception of expanding two state prisons. The state is going to add 600 beds each to the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Sullivan and the Miami Correctional Facility in Miami County.
Those prison expansions, and the governor's moratorium on other new construction, sparked verbal sparring Tuesday between legislators and the governor's deputies.
"If we are going to invest in (public) projects, why have you chosen to invest in prisons rather than our state's public universities?" Pelath pressed.
Kitchell and Ruhl shot back, saying keeping inmates in overflowing prisons behind bars is a public safety necessity.
"You can't criticize building prisons on one hand and say there's nothing for capital spending on the other hand," Ruhl said.
Such exchanges are unusual this early in the legislative session, Crawford noted.
"We're not even in the first quarter," he said. "We haven't even kicked off yet."
Monday's contentious hearing offered a glimpse at the early battle lines of this year's budget debate. Top Democrats, including Crawford, Pelath and Rep. Dennis Avery from Evansville pressed Kitchell and Ruhl for more than two hours.
The committee's top-ranking Republican, Rep. Jeff Espich of Uniondale, consistently fought off Democrats who were criticizing the budget proposal. He also backed Daniels' opposition to tap the $1.3 billion reserve. "You've got to end up with the same amount of money in your pocket when you get done as you had when you started," Espich said. "That's a balanced budget."
State Rep. Peggy Welch, D-Bloomington, who is on Ways and Means, said later that the governor's budget recommendation and the proposed cuts are just a starting point for the Legislature. The committee can change the funding amounts or restore proposed cuts.
When the budget proposal, now officially designated House Bill 1001-2009, is passed out of the committee, it will go to the Democratic-controlled House, where it can be amended further before it goes to the Republican-controlled Senate.
There, the committee process starts again, and senators can reshape the budget bill with their own funding priorities and send it back to the House.
That will set the stage for negotiations between House and Senate conferees in the final weeks of April to reach a compromise budget before the Legislature adjourns April 29.
Complicating matters this year is a new state revenue forecast due in April that could change the equation, depending on how much less or more money the state has to work with. "We are working within an understanding of what the projected income will be. The April revenue forecast will change that, either positively or negatively," Welch said.
Over coming weeks, Welch said, the Ways and Means Committee will hear from the heads of each department of state government about their individual budget requests. Each agency needs to be able to explain its mission and goals and how the proposed budget cuts fit within those, she said. "The public doesn't care about the little-bitty numbers, but they want to know, 'Why do we have this agency in the first place?'" Welch said.
The administration's budget proposal would eliminate $3.5 million in annual state funding for public broadcasting. Evansville's public broadcasting station, WNIN, has said such a cut would have a severe impact on its operations.
"So (administration officials) have chosen total deletion for funding for public broadcasting, but I'm sure their attitude would be, 'But if you can figure out something else that you think we can fund this and not fund that, let's talk about it.' That's just the process," Welch said. If Hoosiers think that public broadcasting is important to restore funding with state dollars, then they should communicate that to their legislators - and suggest what else ought to be cut instead, she said.