WTE;2-15-06

February 10, 2005

The drafters of the Wyoming Constitution were well aware that groups of elected officials have a tendency to mislead the public, so when they drafted our constitution in 1889 they made sure to included several sections designed to rein in the lawmakers of the future.

Take Article 3, Section 24 for example, which reads in part, “no bill, except general appropriations (budget) bills and bills for the codification and general revision of the law, shall be passed containing more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title”. The obvious rational is to make sure that a large number of topics cannot be buried in one single bill.

Then take Article 3, Section 34, which covers the appropriation bills exemption stated above. It reads…”The general appropriations bills shall embrace nothing but appropriations for the ordinary expenses of the legislative, executive and judicial departments of the state, interest on the public debt, and for public schools. All other appropriations shall be made by separate bills, each embracing but one subject.”

Once again the clear purpose of that portion of our founding document was to limit the ability of future legislators to turn appropriations bills into grab bags of different topics. Unfortunately the discipline imposed by the constitutional language has broken down and is no longer sufficient. The budget process has developed a number of problems.

Legislators of the past had a large amount of respect for our state constitution, and chose to refrain from violating the provision relating to the limits placed on appropriations bills. The budget bills of today are very different from those of past legislatures. Historic budget bills respected the constitutional language and contain only monetary amounts and what agency of state government was to receive the appropriation; that is no longer true.

In recent years there has been a disturbing, and more frequent, addition to the budget process called a ‘footnote’. Footnoting is the process by which policy setting language is added to the budget bill, thereby circumventing the above-mentioned constitutional prohibition against such activities. The citizens are not well served by the Legislature burying language relating to many topics within the budget bill.

It is a given that every budget bill will pass through the Legislative process, so if a non-budget item is amended into such a bill, then its passage is assured.

And footnoting is not the only problem with the current budget process. There is also a fairly recent change to the manner in which the budget bills are considered in the legislative process. Budget bills do not go through the same rigorous, two chamber, Senate and House, multi-day examination that other bills do.

The modern budget bills are a new breed of cat, they are designated as ‘mirror bills’. This means that the exact same bill is introduced simultaneously in both chambers, and the two bills proceed side by side. Contrast that with a regular bill that must first work its way through the first chamber, pass all of its deliberations there, and then go to the second chamber to begin the process all over again.

Mirror bills fly through the legislative process in roughly half the time and the citizens are the losers. Because the process is effectively cut in half, the time available for citizen comment is drastically reduced.

In addition to the citizens losing out by not having as much time to figure out what the legislators are doing to them, there is another problem associated with the mirror bill process.

To a very large degree the only legislators who have the opportunity to hear budget details from the heads of agencies in an official setting are the members of the Appropriations Committee. The 5 Senate members and 7 House members sit in review of all of the various budget requests, at which time they have the opportunity to ask whatever questions they wish of the budget presenters, who are usually the heads of agencies and other mucky-mucks.

This concentrates a lot of budget power in very few hands, and therefore needs to be changed. The Senate Appropriations Committee consists of 5 members, and since they are the only ones that have heard the budget discussions, it is very difficult to argue against their opinions.

It would be fairly easy to expand the number of legislators and committees involved with the budget process. All that would have to be done it to pair the existing legislative committees with the budget requests that come from the state agencies normally under the purview of that committee.

Take the Judiciary Committee for example; they usually hear bills related to the courts, probation and parole, law enforcement and other associated topics. It would be possible to tie the budget requests from those agencies to the Judiciary Committee as well, and give the members on that committee some of the budget power.

The budget process of the Wyoming Legislature is flawed and in need of reform. I have tried to identify the areas of concern that I observed during my time in the Legislature. The sooner reform takes place, the better off the citizens will be.