Summary of Senate's original version of state budget

6/19/2009 1:37:00 PM

The state Senate has voted, 17-16, to pass its version of the biennial budget bill. The bill passed with 17 Democratic votes; Senator Jim Sullivan (D-Wauwatosa) joined all 15 Republicans in voting against it.

School funding
Cuts to school funding largely remain unchanged as in the versions passed by the Assembly and Joint Finance Committee, with a few exceptions. Among those exceptions are:

• Increased general school aids for consolidated school districts.
• Restoration of the prior year base revenue floor for severe declining enrollment school districts, ensuring that a current year's revenue limit will not be less than that of the prior year, mirroring action by the Assembly.
• Setting the low revenue ceiling at $9,800 beginning in 2011-2012 (the ceiling is currently at $9,000).
• Providing $3 million in 2010-11 for 4K grants.
• Increasing the sparsity aid per pupil amount to $300 for all eligible school districts effective in 2009-10.
• Elimination of the bilingual education program requirement for the Milwaukee private school voucher program added by the Joint Finance Committee.

Collective bargaining

While Senate Democrats stood firm in rejecting Republican amendments to restore the QEO and "greater and greatest weight", the Senate did vote to make a few changes in the area of collective bargaining. Those include:

• Under the Senate version of the bill, the QEO would be repealed immediately; the Assembly and Joint Finance Committee versions of the budget would have made the repeal effective July 1, 2010.
• The Senate version repeals the "greater and greatest weight" arbitration criteria, but adds a provision specifying that arbitration may not give weight to accumulated fund balances, and states that if the arbitration decision is in favor of the union, the employer may not use any accumulated fund balance for salaries or fringe benefits. Our union strongly opposes this provision and will work to remove it from the budget as the process continues.

The Senate version of the state budget also provides for the conversion of vacant unit manager positions in the Department of Corrections, Division of Adult Institutions, into teacher positions.

Next steps

The vote cleared the way for a special Senate-Assembly conference committee to resolve differences between the two houses of the Legislature. An unamendable conference committee report will then go before each house for an up or down vote before heading to Governor Doyle for his consideration. Both the Senate and Assembly hope to complete their action on the state budget before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.

Legislative Fiscal Bureau summary of the Senate Amendment to the Joint Finance Committee version of the state budget.

State Budget