'Base budget' in works

GOP legislative leaders are moving toward adopting what they call a "base budget," even before the 2006 Legislature actually convenes in early January.

They believe shifting to an early-action approach to setting the state's budget will allow the 104 part-time lawmakers to better concentrate on how to spend "new money" each session.

But the change — while perhaps more time-efficient — could have long-term political impacts, some veterans of the legislative process say. For example, the governor's office budget recommendations, released each December, could be marginalized; minority Democratic legislators' spending ideas and/or public debate over state spending might be curtailed.

In short, critics are concerned that early action could make the bulk of the budget and the major state spending priorities subject to quick votes the first week of each 45-day general session.

House budget chair Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, proposed the "base budget" to the Legislative Process Committee recently, saying that appropriations subcommittee members devote hours reviewing expenditures by state government agencies while knowing full well that current year spending is routinely approved for the following year.

Rarely, if ever, are programs or staff trimmed, Bigelow said. The review is essentially a dog-and-pony show of department leaders' justifying to subcommittees their agency's current spending.

"The process can be improved," Bigelow said, by having lawmakers better spend their time on how to allocate "new money" — growth in tax revenues.

In a way, legislators did that in the 2005 Legislature when they, for the first time, approved what they called a "base budget" bill in mid-session. Supplemental appropriation acts were then debated and approved in the session's final days. "Almost everyone has said they liked that process," said Bigelow, whose proposal would put that newly-tried budgeting system into law and legislative rule.

But, critics wonder, what will happen if final February revenue estimates for the next budget year actually come in lower than the estimates a governor uses to set recommendations two months earlier, or are lower than the numbers legislative leaders are relying on just before lawmakers convene the third Monday in January?

"That has happened before," said Lynne Ward, who put together 12 annual budgets for former Govs. Mike Leavitt and Olene Walker. "Then you would have to go back (in supplemental bills) and cut the budgets that you approved just weeks before. That's not more efficient," Ward said.