Keep special session short
Published 12:01 am Wednesday, April 20, 2011
State lawmakers admit they’ll miss their budget deadline. That doesn’t spell a failed session … yet.
Their failure to pass a spending plan by Sunday’s scheduled end of the 105-day legislative session can be minimized, even forgiven, if House and Senate leaders get right to work next week an
d bridge their remaining differences quickly. They should give themselves only a very short extension, and agree to limit it only to discussion of the 2011-13 budget and the bills needed to implement it.
Rehashing old issues, or bringing up new ones, would be a waste of time, energy and taxpayers’ money. A repeat of last year’s special session, which turned into an all-but-pointless 30-day slog, would be inexcusable, and would rightly incur the wrath of voters.
After all, as difficult as this year’s process has been for lawmakers, closing a $5 billion-plus gap between revenue and planned spending with no federal money to help bail them out, they knew how big the challenge was when they convened in January. Heck, they knew when they updated the current budget back in November.
Still, some dicey policy differences remain to be hashed out between the budget plans passed by the House and Senate. It’s time to engage in the inevitable end-game of any legislative session: compromise.
One contentious proposal, reforming state workers’ compensation to allow voluntary settlements as an alternative to lifetime pensions for workers with serious injuries, should be adopted. It’s an important cost-saving reform, one that could have a huge impact on job growth. To get there, though, its backers will need to give up something.
Perhaps it’s the proposal to base teacher layoff decisions on performance rather than seniority. We support that, too, but something has to give. Maybe it’s the Senate budget’s pay cuts for teachers and other education staff. Or the Deficit Reduction Act. Nobody’s going to get everything they want.
Budget negotiators know what the key issues are. They have a good idea of where compromise is possible. They need to focus on that, and put aside any possibility of a special session circus where new bills are introduced and proposals that died earlier get new life. At a cost of up to $20,000 per day, taxpayers would no doubt find such a sideshow infuriating.
Many difficult, painful decisions have been made over the past three months. Overall, lawmakers deserve credit for the progress they’ve made. But such credit is tenuous. Only by actually finishing their work, in just a few extra days, will they get to keep it.
