Work resumes, though differently, on state budget impasse

DES MOINES – Activity resumes today at the Statehouse with House Republicans and Senate Democrats on different tracks to jump-start budget work in hopes of forging a compromise that can stave off a state government shutdown come July 1.

Majority GOP representatives have scheduled committee work on a single, omnibus budget measure that proposes to fund just under $6 billion worth of state operations in fiscal 2012 and provides much of the framework for a fiscal 2013 budget plan – including a 2 percent increase in per-pupil “allowable growth) funding for K-12 schools.

The House Appropriations Committee is slated to take up the measure and move it to the House Ways and Means Committee, which likely will add a property tax reform component to the 518-page bill. The Ways and Means panel also may take up and amend the Senate's reworked version of a House bill that sought to block a planned late-term abortion clinic in Council Bluffs by prohibiting more abortions in Iowa from begin performed after the 20th week of pregnancy.

House Majority Leader Linda Upmeyer, R-Garner, said plans call for whatever bills move through the committees on Monday to be debated by the full House on Tuesday, the session's 149th calendar day.

House Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said Republicans agreed to work on an alternative omnibus bill because the traditional method of hammering out a budget deal has “proved unfruitful” with Democrats in the split-control Legislature.

“Not all of their concerns are going to be accommodated, just like not all of the Republican concerns are going to be accommodated,” he said, “but we have made a very sincere effort to put something together that we think they should be able to pick up and move forward with.”

On the Senate side, majority Democrats plan to spend the session's 22nd week by hold week-long subcommittee hearings on education, human services, economic development, administration/regulation, and agriculture and natural resources budget areas. The Senate is slated to be in session at 10 a.m. on Tuesday but it did not appear that a full 50-member contingent would be present.

Senate President Jack Kibbie, D-Emmetsburg, said his preference would be to continuing work on individual budget bills by sending them to joint House-Senate conference committees where open discussions could take place and Iowans could track developments or the lack of agreements rather than rolling everything into one massive measure.

“I think we've got quite a ways to go,” Kibbie said. “If they've got policy bills in their bill that we've already turned down in committee or on the floor, we're not going to revisit those.”

Meanwhile, Gov. Terry Branstad plans to open the week by sending Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds and an Iowa delegation off on a trade mission to South Korea and China while he stays in Iowa for continued budget negotiations. While his overseas trip is off, the governor plans to do plenty of in-state traveling by embarking on a 43-city tour designed to build public support for the GOP budget approach.

“We have offered a budget reconciliation that improves Iowa's long-term sustainability, and it will take all of us working together in order to ensure Iowa's future growth,” Branstad said in a written statement. “I look forward to traveling the state to discuss the state's budget and our plans to restore honest budgeting practices. The tour will provide Iowans information regarding my administration's plan to build a strong fiscal foundation for the future and create jobs in Iowa.”

Senate Republican Leader Paul McKinley of Chariton, in his weekly newsletter, blamed Senate Democrats for “pushing the state ever closer to a government shutdown” that could occur if July 1 arrives and the Legislature and Branstad do not have a spending plan authorized to fund state operations.

Should July 1 arrive without a fiscal 2012 budget in place, McKinley said the outcome would have “serious consequences for the timely funding for our schools and other government entities like our state troopers, prison guards, health and food inspectors and child protection services among many, many others. Make no mistake, a shutdown of Iowa's government would send negative reverberations throughout every community, county and school in this state.”