No one’s talking state government shutdown — yet

DES MOINES – The specter of a government shutdown that all state leaders say they want to avoid began to take form at the Statehouse this week.

Not since 1992, when Gov. Terry Branstad and state lawmakers went through two special sessions to arrive at a budget deal in the final week of the fiscal year, have deepening budget disagreements threatened to keep the partisans at loggerheads even though the July 1 start of fiscal 2012 is still eight weeks away.

Even though all the Statehouse players reject any doomsday scenario that would threaten state functions should July 1 arrive without a budget agreement, they concede that the April 30 adjournment target came and went without any movement and there isn't another pressure point to spur accord until July 1.

“I would tell you that House Republicans are not going to let government shut down,” House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said Thursday. “I think that would be unacceptable.”

Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said it's too early to talk about that but he added that the stance by majority House Republicans and Branstad to put a $6 billion spending on state spending next fiscal year was a step backwards at a time when the state is holding record reserves and families are being strained to send their kids to college, buy food and gasoline, and put up with other rising costs.

“This is going to take awhile - weeks, months,” he said of prospects for agreeing on state budget plans for fiscal year 2012 and 2013, a tax relief package and other issues standing in the way of adjourning the 2012 session.

Branstad conceded it likely will take some hard bargaining to change the way lawmakers have done things the last four years and convince them to approve an austere, two-year budget plan.

“The problem you've got if you don't do that, then you have this deal-making that occurs in the middle of the night at the end of the session and they use all kinds of funny money, and then you have this big budget hole the next year. We're going to stop that,” he told reporters Thursday.

“It's time to get serious about getting these things worked out,” Branstad added. “I intend to work with them day in and day out. There's still plenty of time to get this resolved. We're not a Memorial Day, let alone the Fourth of July. I think we need to just keep working together. It's going to take patience and perseverance.”

Rep. Scott Raecker, R-Urbandale, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said House and Senate budget subcommittee leaders are still having production conversations and he was encouraged that incremental progress was continuing.

“It's slow, but it will get done. I just don't know what that timeline will be,” said Raecker, although he did not think it would take until June 30 to finish the 2011 session work.

“Nobody wants that and I think it's way premature to be talking about (a government shutdown),” said Branstad chief of staff Jeff Boeyink. “I don't think we'll get close to those dates.”

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