Tim Skubick

This one is as old as it gets, but in this case it really does fit.

There are two things in life you never want to see being made… sausage and legislation. Both are ugly, dirty and smelly, but in the product in the end is eatable.

And right now all the special interest groups in our town are feasting on a brand new, breaking new ground state budget that hovers right around the $80 billion plateau.

Reporters were asked to pinpoint the winners and losers in the process. On the latter list is the state’s business community which took a hit on tax breaks and state assistance in luring more jobs to the state. On the winners list are the 152 non-profits and local governments that divvy up the $450 million plus in local projects affectionately know in some circles as pork barrel spending. More on that in a moment.

But there was one group of winners that nobody thought about… you. The citizen who pays for all this.

Given the current political climate where brick bats are routinely swung at the other guys more than mutual deal making hand shakes, it is somewhat amazing that this legislature and governor found a way to avoid that and actually do something on a bipartisan basis for you. Who’d of thunk they could pull this off.

Asked what made her proud when the deal was done, the governor quickly reflected, “We got it done. You look at what’s going on at the federal level, you look at how hot the political rhetoric is, it was not easy (but) we we’re able to pull everything together, hammer through our differences and come up with a budget. It’s a damn good budget and I’m proud of that,” she smiles.

In case you don’t know it, that is the way it has always been around here way before the toxic nature of politics grabbed hold of the democracy where compromise and cooperation are viewed as a sign of weakness.

House GOP Speaker Matt Hall was especially geeked about slicing into pork barrel spending. Last year, the legislature and governor shoveled a billion dollars into those local “help-me-get-re-elected” programs, but this year as noted above, they pretty much reduce that in half but with a new mandate.

Heretofore, there was no up front disclosure of all the details relating to where the money was going before legislators voted on it. The budget line item basically read, “$5000,000 for Project ‘X'” in this town or that. And if you wanted to know more about it, you had to hunt to find that info.

Because he refused to defend the status quo, Speaker Hall demanded that before any projects got approval, all of the details, including the name of the lawmaker seeking the largess, would have to be revealed.

“That was the biggest sticky point in the negotiations” with senate Democrats, he discloses. He argues they wanted to hide all the data until after the vote.

“Democrats would not cave on the pork disclosure and I wasn’t going to cave on not having the disclosure and finally they wanted the pork so badly they agreed to make” this reform permanent.

The governor chimes in, “there is going to be more transparency and that was something that was long overdue and important and it’s really a good long-term policy change,” for the public.

But while the Republicans were boasting about being sunshine/transparency lovers, they failed miserably at disclosing what was in the final budget document until the 11th hour as lawmakers and media were left in the dark.

For weeks lawmakers complained, “show us the budget details… I’m not going to vote blindly,” one house member warned and Rep. Dylan Wegala (D-Garden City) was not a chorus of one.

Finally at 6 p.m. last Thursday night, about four hours before they started voting on the budget, everyone got a peek at the document. Four hours!

Early in the day when the “show us the budget now” pleas were getting louder, the GOP chairwoman of the house budget committee was asked about these complaints.

She glibly noted, “Well that’s not unusual that we hear that. I would say that, ah, ya know, all along the way we have been very transparent and very open about what the (budget) framework was going to be.”

As comic Steve Martin use to say, “Well, excuse me!” The critics might argue that reading a “framework” of a budget is not the same as studying the actual numbers in the entire budget.

But in the wee small hours of the morning, all the budgets were adopted and now the deep dive into where the sausage is really going commences.