Senate Democrats offer GOP, Branstad budget compromise

Majority Democrats in the Iowa Senate today offered a “middle-ground” proposal to pass a fiscal 2012 budget and 50 percent of the following fiscal year's spending plan in hopes of meeting Gov. Terry Branstad's demand that lawmakers pass a biennial budget before they adjourn the 2011 session.

“We're trying to meet him half way on this,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs. He said an administration and regulation budget bill the Senate debates later today will include funding for fiscal 2012 and a 50 percent budget for the following year in hopes of avoiding an impact with Branstad and the House GOP majority with an April 29 adjournment target arriving next week.

Branstad indicated earlier this week that he considered his campaign pledge to require a two-year state budget and a five-year long-range strategic plan to be “not negotiable” as he attempts to build more reliability and stability in the state budget process. During his weekly meeting with reporters, the GOP governor said he was not interested in anything short of full appropriations for the next two budget cycles.

“We are ready to work with Gov. Branstad and Republican legislators on meaningful budget reforms that will shake up the budget-making process,” Gronstal told a news conference where he and Sen. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, offered what they considered to be a way to “meet the governor in the middle.” He noted that long-range revenue estimates have not been reliable enough to use as a foundation on which to build spending priorities for the next 24 months.

“We think it's irresponsible to craft a budget on some pretty shaky numbers historically,” Gronstal said. “The governor has talked about a more-intensive process and we take him at his word that it's not a power grab by the executive branch” to demand a two-budget that would amount to the Legislature giving him a two-year “blank check” without public accountability.

Dvorsky said the new proposed budget reform would require a justification for every government program annually rather than being on “autopilot” with adjustments made on a small percentage of the various funding levels.

One key sticking point in the current budget discussion revolves around GOP plans to pare back state funding for preschool programs and to freeze K-12 schools' “allowable growth” for two years at zero. The GOP plan would still pump up to $215 million into K-12 education to “backfill” property tax money used to cover past shortfalls in state aid.

Legislative Democrats want to continue the current preschool funding arrangement and to provide a 2 percent boost in base K-12 per-pupil spending through June 30, 2013. Gronstal characterized the GOP proposal as a “starvation budget” for education and said he envisioned “no scenario of zero growth” in the next two budgeting cycles.