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Top of the morning

Post on June 4, 2012 by 8 Comments »

In case you are wondering how the Senate is putting its budget together, check out what Appropriations Chair Neal Hunt posted Friday on his Facebook page.

It is budget crunch time. The other Senate Appropriation co-chairs (Pete Brunstetter, Richard Stevens) and I will meet all day today and Saturday with the Senate fiscal staff to finalize our proposed 2012-2013 budget.

Nice of them to finalize things all on their own.  Not letting anyone else have a say certainly saves a lot of time and aggravation.

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Comments (Closed):8

  1. Frank Burns
    June 4, 2012 at 8:41 am

    How do you think the budget is ever done? A couple of people sit down and fill it out. How did we ever survive before we had advocacy groups?

  2. Chris Fitzsimon
    June 4, 2012 at 8:53 am

    One way the budget could be done is by having open subcommittee meetings where people testify and rank and file members listen and ask questions and the public can comment. You know—democracy.

  3. Frank Burns
    June 4, 2012 at 9:40 am

    Chis, you have to start with something first, prior to any committee meetings. You can’t start with a blank piece of paper. There would be an over all goal such as no new taxes, no overall spending increase.

  4. david esmay
    June 4, 2012 at 10:01 am

    Frank, what do you think they’ve been doing for the last month? There should be a goal, how do we adequately fund education and state government. Once again, Frank, like your Teathuglican brethren, you are consistent, consistently wrong when it comes to economic issues and revenues keeping government in operation.

  5. Chris Fitzsimon
    June 4, 2012 at 10:01 am

    You start with the budget already approved for next year ( or the budget that just passed the House) and ask agency people and others to testify about it and what else if anything is needed. You have hearings to allow the public to weigh in too. Then you come back with a draft reflecting all those comments.

    You don’t unveil a budget from the leadership at the beginning. That is simply not an open process.

  6. Frank Burns
    June 4, 2012 at 10:46 am

    David,
    You make a big mistake with budgeting if you make the assumption that every state agency or department gets a raise. We need to delve deeply into each agency and re-evaluate needs versus nice to have items. Every agency has nice to have items included in their budget requests. It is entirely appropriate to set target budgets for each agency, then cut out the nice to have items.

  7. david esmay
    June 4, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    Frank, you make a big mistake assuming that every state agency is over funded, when the obverse is true. Every agency has a budget, which is true, most have already been significantly reduced, but to assert that if they can still function with limited resources and provide the same level of services is a fallacy.

  8. Frank Burns
    June 4, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    David,
    What needs to be evaluated are those services. The question needs to be asked for each agency:
    1. Does that service need to continue, in full or partly?
    2. If that service is need, how can we do that service with less cost? Are their efficiencies that can be gained by automation, or changing the work flow?