A Long Battle, Success for the Budget Plan
By Jared Seymour, Staff Writer
6/19/2008
The governor’s budget plan was given to the Senate early Wednesday morning. The bill, a modification of the 2007 Boys State budget plan, stayed true to the governor’s initial promises of balancing the budget without raising taxes. Increases were made to the Tourism, Water Quality, Public Transport, Commercial Transport, General K-12 and Quality Improvement, and the State Police Retirement Funds. Decreases were then made to the Transportation Planning and Research, State Police Post Operations, and the State Operations funds, in which a 10% decrease in the salaries of all state Executive, Legislative, and Judicial employees were made to, as the governor stated, “take the punch for the citizens, and show them that we really do care about their hardships.” Some of the senate tried to call for amendments to the bill, but the governor stated firmly that he would make no changes.
Two hours after the bill was brought to the senate, a final vote of 13 for and 3 against passed the bill on to the House of Representatives. Where the bill passed without too many bumps in the Senate, many deliberations were taken in the House, specifically by members of the Budget committee. Much of the delay was due to the amount of money placed in the budget for the State Welfare Program. The head chair of the committee wanted to lower what he considered wasted funds, as he calculated that the unemployed were receiving $17,000+ when the national average for unemployment given is around $10,000. The committee and the governors cabinet met several times to discuss the issue of the appropriation of the funds, yet when the House was finally called to vote, it was passed as written with 19 for and 8 against, and it was signed into law at 4:24 PM. "I will continue to pursue education reform, with the programs I have planned and shared with Boys State, and to work to raise the overall graduation percentage... "I will stay faithful to what I have said to congress and the citizens of Boys State.”
Unfortunately, that was not the end of discussion of the budget. Due to a small clerical error, which was caught by one of the governor’s cabinet members, the bill needed to be fixed through the passage of another bill.
The second bill was pushed aside by the Senate until finally a vote was taken at about 8:40 PM, with a 15 to 1 vote for the bill, and house followed shortly after, with a 21 to 4 vote for the bill. Brian Mamassian, Transportation/ Housing and Business/Commerce Secretary, had this to say about the process of passing the budget: “Planning the state budget has been a challenge, but with a cooperative cabinet, compromise, and having a leader as our governor, Jeremy Browning has truly been effective. I revised the budget several times, and fortunately, there were minor flaws.”