Michael Moline
Don’t let the perhaps flawed way that House and Senate negotiators agreed upon their $83 billion state budget tarnish the final bill, Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Latvala urged Monday as the Senate took up the measure in an extended session.
“We’ve done a lot of good with this budget” and “cannot get bogged down just worrying about one issue and forget all of the many accomplishments that we’ve had together this year,” he said.
“If there’s fault to be had for one of these bills that has gotten a little bit out of control, just understand that we won’t do this again under my watch on this committee. I promise you that,” Latvala said.
The process mostly worked as designed, he contended.
“By and large, we were not interfered with in any way, shape or form, in doing our budgets in our respective subcommittees. We’ve got a good process, and I’m very proud of that product,” Latvala said.
“I think it would be unfortunate to let that product be overshadowed by one or two bills that were added to the conference as conforming bills.”
He reminded the senators of the “regular, full-scale throw-down on conforming bills” during the 2011 session.
This year, lead conferees agreed that the House could bring its preK-12 priorities and the Senate its higher education initiatives into conforming legislation.
“Perhaps they got a little carried a way with their bill. And perhaps it went a little further than a bill should have gone in the conforming bill process,” Latvala said.
“For that, I take the responsibility. I could have cut that off at any time. I could have cut it off in the beginning by going to the president and saying it just wasn’t what we needed to do. I didn’t do that, in trying to respect the two-house system that is so important to governing our state.”
He apologized if the process was abused.
“But today … we have a package of bills. And that package of bills is an entirety,” Latvala said. “If we don’t proceed to adopt all those bills, then we basically have nothing.”
That would force a special session in which lawmakers come back and “we redo our job,” he said.
